Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers (Demo v0.17) Review

EDIT 1/7/2024: This review is from v0.17, which is now out of date. Funny that I joked about this, and not even a week later, it's true.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is a game made by Purple Moss Collectors. It is currently in development, slated for a 2024 release, and has a demo on itch.io that was published on August 9th, 2022. This demo is getting rather frequent updates, so there's a good chance that this post will eventually be out of date, and I’ll just look silly.

    Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is blackjack, turned roguelike. You select a starting deck, one for each suit, and then go into battle. You and your opponent keep hitting, adding cards into play, until you stand, and the opponent stands. Then whoever has the largest number under 22 gets to attack. Damage is calculated by taking your number, as well as the opponent’s number, and subtracting it. If I got 20, and my opponent has 18, then I will do 2 damage to the opponent. If someone busts, say I got an 18, and the opponent busts at 23, then I get to do 18 damage. Now getting 21 has a special effect depending on the suit. Clubs multiply your damage by 2, Spades give you a shield, Diamonds give you chips, and Hearts give you health. You get 100 chips after defeating the opponent. Chips act as currency, you can sometimes use them to buy stuff. One other thing, you start the game with 100 HP, and you do not heal in between opponents.

   

    Now, if you understood everything I said above, you might be asking how is this fun. It’s just Blackjack, but with some roguelike elements, where the heck is the strategy? Well, hold your horses buddy, I’m getting there. After you defeat an opponent, you get the option to add a card to your deck. These cards are where the strategy comes into play. To explain what every card does will take about 3000 words, and we don’t have that kind of time, so instead, I'll list a few of my favorite cards and describe them.

Booster Pack: Adds 5 to your current score, and gives you 5 random cards. You must immediately play one card, but the other 4 go into your hand. The cards in your hand can be played whenever you want. Can only be used once per opponent.

Ace Up Your Sleeve: Adds an Ace of a random suit to your hand.

Trap Card: If your opponent attacks while this card is in play, the damage is reversed, and sent to the opponent.

Gerald from Riviera: Adds 3 to your current score, and allows you to burn any card from the opponent's play pile, and remove it from the game. Can only be used once per opponent.

Glitched Card: It copies itself to any card in the game. It copies everything about the card, including its value, suit, and effect.

There are many other cards that all add strategy to the game, but that was only a small sample size that I hoped portrayed the idea.

   

 So that’s enough overview, what do I think about the game? Well, to be honest, this game has been very addictive to me, which is ironic, considering it has a gambling aspect to it. I have done full playthroughs of this demo about a dozen times, and I don’t plan on stopping soon. What makes this game so replayable is the fact that every playthrough is different, and there's a high amount of choice that you have in how your playthrough can go. Do you want a white mage-like deck that focuses on healing? You can do that. Do you want a deck that is based around high-risk, high-reward? You can do that. Do you want to just run with the cards you start with like an insane person? Well, you can even do that as well. There are limitless possibilities for how you can do a run, and this is only going to get bigger when more levels, and more cards are added.

    There are also a few other details I’d like to bring up. Firstly, I enjoy the art on the cards. Seeing a card I hadn’t seen for the first time was exciting because I got to marvel at the art. Some cards don’t have art yet, and use a placeholder graphic, but it’s a demo, so that’s perfectly respectable, and the placeholder graphic looks good. Another fun thing to discover is all the references. I won’t spoil all of them, but there are a lot. There are cards based on real-world situation cards, such as a Green card, and a Social Security card. There are cards based on cards in the card collection scene such as card sleeves, and a graded Baseball card. Finally, there are cards based on cards from other games, such as Charred Lizard, which is based on the base set Charizard card from Pokémon, as well as a Get Out of Jail Free card, which is from Monopoly. These references were things that made me smile and chuckle a bit when I discovered them.

    There is so much more I can go into about Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, such as the events that occur in between rounds, but I will leave those for you to discover. This game is one of my favorite games that I played in 2023, and I can’t wait for the full thing to drop. Please, do yourself a favor, and check this game out.

Click here to go to the itch.io page for the demo.

Do you need more convincing? Then click here for a gameplay video from one of my runs.

Have a great day!