It’s funny and immersive, contrasting with the complexity of the card action. Everything looks like a modern, satirical, comic book-influenced take on courtly painting from the XVIII century. But I never felt like the higher-level cheating, with its many steps and required memorization was worth investing in.Ĭard Shark cleverly uses its look to attract players that might be a little afraid of the complexity of its gameplay. These are all designed to keep the player engaged while he swipes, counts, places, and cuts cards in increasingly familiar but complex ways. There’s a juicy plot that might be important to the Comte and the king's fate. Some familiar historical figures appear and talk about the era and its mores. Fail there and death might become a possibility (although it seems that there are special terms for good card cheats).Ĭard Shark works hard to disguise the fact that actually performing tricks, especially the high-end ones, is a chore. Fail and you’ll have to go back to places where the cheating is easier to restore your gold reserves.
Players will go to explore places in France, each inhabited by suspicious but obsessive card players.
Some strategies require moving between points of interest. When the pair of protagonists are not working with cards directly, the game offers a few other limited mechanics. There’s a lot of space to rehearse moves and get them down but, when attempting to make progress, players will have to execute with an attached time pressure (showing the suspicion of other players). And this is just the fourth trick out of 28 that are featured.
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The player has to keep in mind the cards he sees on opponents, the way to signal, and how to cut a deck to deal a good hand to his benefactor. Then the complexity ramps up significantly. Three Card Monte is next, a little more challenging, with a trick built around rhythm. Pour wine, read an opponent's cards, and use motions to signal the Comte what you have learned. The game’s world is not aiming for historical accuracy, but the writing does a good job of communicating the stakes, although Saint-Germain can become a little annoying, especially when the game uses his conversations to critique the social system.Īt first, Card Shark seems simple in terms of mechanics. Secrets (and Voltaire) soon come up and there are hints of a deeper narrative, centered on the King and his own high-betting table. He becomes a protege of the Comte de Saint-Germain, who relies on him to win card games against the French upper class in the XVII century.
The protagonist is a young mute with a knack for learning how to cheat at cards. As the name implies the title focuses on showing players a range of card cheating techniques and giving them the space to try and perfect their use.
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The game is available on the PC via Steam, where I played it, and on the Nintendo Switch. But as the difficulty and stakes increase, I find that nerves can ruin even a virtual hand when trying to cheat with the big boys.Ĭard Shark is developed by Nerial, with publishing in the hands of Devolver Digital. So, I move around locations in France, trying to part people from their money by performing card tricks that I would never dream of in the real world. The game showed me how to perform it, gave my character the space to practice, and does not take into account my fat fingers. But in Card Shark, I can now do it reliably, after having quite a few issues with it on the first try. Not in the real world, of course, where emotions would get the better of me and my hands would tremble and lead to failure. I think I understand how to actually reveal the card that someone else chooses out of a deck of cards.
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