It’s been awhile since I played a card game. Last one I ever laid hands on was Griftlands and that was all the way back in 2022. There’s gotta be another good card game for me to try. I wanted to get into Dicey Dungeons, because a lot of people said it was like Slay The Spire but more wacky and RNG based. Played it for a few hours and just couldn’t get into it. I keep hearing about this Runeterra game but the moment I review a League of Legends title is the moment I fully sell out. Just give me a game where fiddling around with the cards is fun. What’s that I hear!? A cool new indie card game about fiddling around with cards that came out two years ago. That sounds quite awesome I can’t wait t- oh you mean actually fiddle around with cards. Like bend and perform cool tricks with them, and learn to cheat your way through poker games. Not exactly what I was looking for, but for some reason I’m interested. Card Shark, a narrative-driven puzzle card game developed by indie studio Nerial. This is an interesting title for them as it was their first major departure from their flagship franchise Reigns. A game where you decide what happens to the inhabitants of a medieval world just by swiping left or right, and the world would change based on the choices you made and how you treat the people of your dear kingdom.
It was an interesting concept they then proceeded to make dozens of entries of. I believe the last entry came out this very year, Reigns Beyond, where they shot their formula into space. Before that they did the Han Dynasty and before that Game of f*cking Thrones. I don’t want to bring the developers down or anything, and some of them might potentially be reading this review. I do see why Reigns got tiresome as they proceeded to churn out more games. Such an easy to make and write basis was pushed to the extreme, and it got tiresome due to how they didn’t do much to innovate the formula outside of changing the setting. It’s like the Assassin’s Creed of indie games and I hate saying that seeing how I’ve been getting into Assassin’s Creed recently. We all live in wild times now mates. So after enough entries in the Reigns series, Nerial decided to take a step back and think about what could be something new and interesting for them to do. Something that was more than just swiping left or right on what was basically fantasy tinder. How about we take all the money we made before and dump it into one of the most ambitious projects they’ve ever made. Brilliant, and it’s a game about learning to cheat with cards. Good luck with that.
Card Shark was a partnership between Nerial and independent artist Nicolai Troshinsky. Well known for recapturing the simplistic and stylized look of old artistry and cartoonish comics. As to what time period specifically I don’t personally know, but Troshinsky gained respect due to his ability to recapture the essence of this work. Together they recaptured a historical period, 18th century France, and told a fun tale with twists and turns around every corner. Convenient that I mentioned Assassin’s Creed earlier, as Card Shark makes many references to important events that happened at the time, or expects you to know what was going on. The game being Neiral’s big departure from Reigns was received rather well with critics. Criticism mainly aimed towards the gameplay and design, but people mainly loved the visuals and storytelling of this game. Understandable seeing that is one of the main selling points of Card Shark. I’m surprised this game didn’t get nominated for best art direction or soundtrack in 2022, because it definitely deserves to be up there. Card Shark is one of the most unique card games I’ve played but calling it a card game is doing a disservice.
It’s a puzzle game, light narrative adventure, and it finds ways to evolve despite you doing the same thing over and over during its seven or eight hour long runtime. It’s not gonna be a game for everyone and I will admit recommending it is tricky. If you aren’t ready for the tricks and memorization skills Card Shark expects of you then you’re gonna struggle the same way I did if not more. However, if you are up to the challenge I think this game is worth your time. So today we’re gonna be talking about why I, for the most part, quite liked Card Shark and why it deserves your attention.
Story
It’s the 1800s and France is in absolute shambles. There’s an economic crisis, the ever growing population led to quickly dwindling food supplies, famine is raging across the countryside, and the people are frustrated at the politicians who rule them all. They’ve begun to revolt against the wealth and elite, and nothing but ashes and devastation rage across the countryside. Everything is terrible in France, but thankfully you live quite the peaceful life… for a while. You are mute boy who works in a tavern. Making ends meet and doing what you're told so you can have a decent meal at night and a bed to sleep on. You serve anyone who comes in, but one day you meet a fancy looking individual by the name of Comte de Saint Germain, or the Comte as we’ll be referring to him going further. He tells us in secret he’s made stacks of cash by cleverly cheating at every card game he’s ever been in. With handfuls of tricks that seem like magic, but make a bit more sense when the Comte explains. He says his latest gamble is against a high ranking official in the French government. The right hand man of King Louis,
He wants our help to win against this man and promises to give any extra pocket coin to us if we manage to do our job perfectly. We accept to help seeing how interesting is really happening in our life, and so begins our first big cheat. We help the Comte win the game, but the man who we attempted to cheat notices our tactics. He pulls out a gun and tries to fire it upon us, but instead shoots the maiden of the house who was our guardian. We flee the scene with the Comte who explains we are now a wanted man. That high ranking official we cheated is known for lying his way to success, and he’ll most likely blame us for the murder of our former caretaker. Instead of turning ourselves in or trying to plead in court for innocence, the Comte wants us to travel with him. Help cheat other individuals and uncover a mystery he’s been trying to solve for several years now. A conspiracy known as the Twelve Bottles of Milk. A tale following the current king, his former wife, and a child they supposedly had but disappeared mysteriously. He thinks by finding this child they can use them to shift the world around them and bring balance to a France that is approaching near ruin.
We decide to help and it’s off to the journey of a lifetime.
Gameplay
It’s kind of hard trying to describe the gameplay of Card Shark without accidentally making an explanation of it confusing. After a few tutorials that get you into the mechanics it’s off into the world, and the game has this level based progression. You choose a location and face off against a person you have to cheat. New opponents will require new tactics, and that’s why the Comte will teach you new tricks before a mission can begin. You are allowed to practice these tricks as much as you want so you can be more prepared when thrown against a real person. Tricks in this game are quite varied and some tricks will be evolutions of something you learned before. It can be tucked away the highest value within your sleeve so you can then whip it out later. To peek at the opponent’s deck while pouring them a glass of wine, and signal to the Comte what they have by wiping a rag in a certain pattern. Using finger gestures to signal what they have, collecting cards in a specific order so the Comte has the advantage, and much more. You’ll learn lots of cool tricks and the more of them you perfect against opponents the more money you’ll make.
When you face off against people there’s usually a minimum bidding wage. Let’s say the min is forty gold. I’m not looking up what the currency was called at the time. I don’t care, it’s gold in my eyes. Anyways, that means you must bid that much to initiate the match. If you don’t have that much gold you have to make enough before participating in that mission. If you lose due to performing a card trick incorrectly you lose the gold you betted, but succeed and you’ll obtain twice the amount. You can then proceed to bet again, but this time you can bet more. You can bet as much as you want as long as you have it, but know that there are risks. You could mess up and lose almost everything, or betting too much will raise awareness of your opponent. There is an awareness bar in this game. It goes up when you bet more than the requirement per round or if you mess up during certain procedures. If the awareness bar reaches the max you get caught by your opponent for cheating, and they will either leave or kick you out of the match. In a couple of cases they’ll order for your death and it’s game over. If you die in this game you get sent to limbo, and there you have one of two choices. Either cheat death and return before a mission begins with all the gold you had prior, or return but lose some of the gold you formerly had. So play carefully and master those tricks. Outside of that there’s not much else I can say. Let’s just hope you can cheat them all and change the course of fate. France begs for more, dear child.
Thoughts
Card Shark is a game I really enjoyed despite its faults, but I can understand someone not liking it. The game has three difficulty settings and I played in what was basically normal mode. I was decently challenged, but faced several difficulty curves along my journey. Challenge in this game is quite weird as it comes less from your opponents and more from being able to do what is being asked of you. Card Shark does a decent job when it comes to teaching you new tricks. You can practice on a single trick as much as you want, and if you fail a mission and reattempt they’ll give you the option to keep practicing. I especially like how when a mission brings up a trick you learned before you can get a refresher on what it was. There are twenty eight different tricks in this game and some of them are evolutions of ones you learned before. I like how there is a small encyclopedia you can pull up to remind yourself of previous tricks. I enjoy how much variation there is for tricks, and I can tell the people who made this game wanted to have as much as they could bring from reality. However, and I’m gonna get flack for saying this, but it feels at times that Card Shark is doing too many tricks. Those tutorials are good, but a lot of tricks especially late in the game are multi-stepped. Many tricks require you to have good memorizations, be able to keep track of multiple elements at once, be able to count, and understand the basic rules and principles of poker. I am not good at some of things personally so I ended up struggling a lot in both the early game and the endgame. There were times I spent 30 minutes practicing just to have the smallest idea of what to do during a real round and not lose cash.
Which does bring upon one of the game’s few pros. Gambling is fun, and that is a statement I’ve never expected to come from my mouth. Gambling is risky, but it’s rewarding at the same time. If you know what you are doing and you think you have the skill and time to succeed you can rake in more cash. I like the awareness system because it adds tension to an already risky game. Should I bet more but raise awareness, or bet little so I can have more time to perfect my tricks and be able to progress in a story mission far enough. The game focuses on one trick per story mission, but there’s these side missions where you can make extra cash. You have the choice of doing one of three tricks per round, and this in some way is Card Shark being as expressive as it can be. Having to vary your approach, but remember how to do each trick well. The game can be hard, but at the end of the day I was satisfied when coming out successful. If you don’t want to participate in the confusing tricks you can always knock down the difficulty. There’s a mode that allows you to skip gambling sections and just focus on the story which I appreciate very much.
I do think the story is one of the biggest focal points of Card Shark besides the art direction. By the way, the art direction of this game is a sight to behold. I’ll always love games with stylized looks more than realistic looks because they tend to stand out more in my memory and age better with time. Card Shark has this look that feels classy, but at the same time still feels like it could be produced by a modern artist. It’s refined, colorful, and I love how they got it moving although it can have janky animation. Backgrounds look almost like paintings, and the characters are then composed of pencil drawing. The music meshes well with the art style as the soundtrack sounds like a piece that could be composed by a symphony composer at the time. A song that would be played at a ball, a party, tea house, and more. Style is big in Card Shark, but it’s not a game that lacks substance. Again, there is a story and for the most part I’d say the story is good. It’s great at times and it was the main reason I kept pushing on even if the late game jobs got frustrating and more annoying than they should be. Card Shark, similar to games like Ghost of Tsushima or the Assassin’s Creed series, is a wonderful twist on history that kept me wanting to learn more.
Who are we? Why are we so important to the main events of the game? What is the conspiracy of Twelve Bottles of Milk? How can one such as I have such a huge impact on the political state of France and the revolution happening within the country? Who was the Comte? Who is this other person I won’t spoil, but keeps hiding in the shadows to occasionally pop out and assist us in our adventure? What’s the actual truth? It’s these questions that get answered with time and everything leading up to the end is pure hype. I kept getting excited by each card (pun intended) and twist Card Shark pulled out and at one point I was ready to call the narrative genius. That was not until the game’s ending came around. Which burned bright, crashed to the ground, and left me feeling a tad bit disappointed. I still very much enjoy the narrative, but without spoiling too much I want to explain why the ending doesn’t work for me. It’s not because the game gives you multiple choices on how the adventure can end. No, in fact I appreciate when the game gives me multiple endings as it gets us to reflect on what we learned so far and what is the best state of the world going forward. I hate it because after a final conversation it doesn’t feel like much of what we learned or did mattered. The game just says, “Well that happened, back to a normal life for you I guess,” and throws us into the same position we saw ourselves right from the get go.
It’s like a spit in the face for anyone who was emotionally attached to the narrative and the many characters it revolved around. My final complaint deals with controls. There are some games that are more designed for playing with a mouse or touchpad rather than a controller. This is one of those games. I played the Nintendo Switch version and the gimmick it has is that if you try to change your control scheme during a round it’ll ask you to redo the round instead of allowing you to move forward. That’s just terrible in my opinion. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood allows you to change control schemes and that’s because it knew neither of the two were fully ideal due to how the game plays. Card Shark is a hard game to recommend, but it’s one I do nonetheless. It’s unique and it’s the only video game out there that’ll teach you how to do card tricks. Cheat at gambling and tell a narrative that uses gambling as a core driving point in a historical period. I like this game and wish the best of luck for anyone who wishes to understand it too. In the end I give Card Shark an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
This critique was written by the single man at Review on. Stay tuned for more content and feel free to check more reviews out over at my site
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