Moreover, this “suspicion bar” can be diminished by letting the fools win some key rounds, so some impromptu strategy is often required to get to the finish line without losing your freedom… or even your life.
However, I found that mouse/touchscreen controls were maybe more intuitive and precise gamepad-based gameplay soon became a hindrance to optimizing my performance and getting some tricks right on time - the folks you’re trying to take money from get progressively suspicious depending on your expertise and how long each bit of your act takes. I particularly liked how many of these tricks aren’t gone for good after you get through certain events, and can even return with a twist - Card Shark normally keeps you on your toes and will surely put some pressure on your memory and pattern recognition skills.īoth the controls and the user interface work as intended, never feeling overwhelming. On top of that, the actual “event games” that open up new story paths are only the culmination of a learning process that starts with a plan, a rundown of who the unsuspecting chumps are, and an in-depth tutorial (and practice) for each new ploy. This could be a recipe for boredom, but the writing is consistently sharp, and each trick is based on a real-world manoeuvre, so you’re actually learning while playing the game.Ī key element in these tricks is signaling or (sometimes) even rigging the card decks, so many actions, such as swapping out cards, take place outside the table where the game is being played. Card Shark is no joke and has plenty to offer and say, but you’re progressing through a list of elaborate, narrative-driven mini-games at the end of the day. While the game does get difficult sooner rather than later, and much of the learning is achieved through failure (in spite of testing your skills before a major challenge), it’s really easy to get used to the controls, which can be either mouse/touchscreen-based or classic (gamepad), and the overall flow of each mini-game. Unsurprisingly, even the stuff that happens outside the games of cards is tied to your cheating abilities, so Card Shark sticks to its strengths for the 8-10 hours that a normal playthrough should take. It’s not long before the stakes of each “game” become quite high, and failure is paid dearly, but there are several ways to avoid palpable disaster (and even your ultimate demise) as well.
Without spoiling anything about the plot’s key developments, I can assure you: Card Shark has plenty of aces up its sleeve and some great payoffs.Īs stated above, Card Shark requires a certain level of patience and finesse, but it’s also a game that’s willing to spend as much time as needed with you, the player, to get all the details of every swindle and sleight of hand right. Of course, no proper “call to adventure” would be complete without a master of sorts, and that’s where veteran con artist Comte de Saint-Germain comes in. Instead, it starts to bake a well-crafted, slow-paced story which takes a mute young man raised in a tavern to the upper echelons of French society.
#CARD SHARP OR CARD SHARK FREE#
As long as you have the nerve and patience, feel free to grab a seat and swindle some dunces.Ĭontrary to what you might expect going in, Card Shark doesn’t put its mechanics and systems front and center. And the coolest thing about it is that it’s not designed for expert card players. Set in 18th century France, the newest creation from Reigns and Pikuniku developer Nerial, alongside multifaceted artist Nicolai Troshinsky, asks players to forget about rules and cheat their way through an increasingly difficult set of unique, narrative-heavy situations. Card Shark is here to tell us that helping someone cheat can be more fun than playing cards.
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