This is the most high-stakes blackjack game you’ll ever play

There are tons of cards games, but few are as stressful as blackjack. It’s a game that hinges around high-stakes risk and reward where strategy can only get you so far. You’re at the mercy of the draw at a certain point. It’s hard to imagine that simple premise becoming any more tense, but a new video game accomplishes exactly that.

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is a new card game out now on Steam. At first glance, it seems fairly obvious what developer Purple Moss Collectors is going for here: It’s Balatro for blackjack. That sufficiently sums it up, though that idea brings its own strengths and weaknesses to what’s becoming indie gaming’s most unlikely emerging genre.

The core idea of Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is simple. It’s a roguelike where players have to beat opponents in blackjack games. The basic rules are the same, with players trying to get as close to 21 without going over. They can stay or hit — the most fundamental bit of risk-reward design in perhaps all of games.

Of course, there’s a twist — a lot of them, actually. Like Balatro, players slowly augment their standard deck with wacky cards, passive boosts, and playable effects. Some of those are easy to understand. A “Big 2” card can either be played as a two or a 12, while negative cards run the count down. Others are significantly more complex (and often very funny). The “Gerald of Riviera” card destroys one of the opponent’s played cards, all while poking fun at The Witcher. “Charred Lizard” looks a lot like Charizard’s original Pokémon card. It can either be played as a 10 or sold to the opponent’s discard pile for 10 chips.

That idea works in the context of blackjack, though its not as natural a fit as it was for poker in Balatro. Blackjack is still a game that heavily revolves around the luck of the draw. Deck-building decisions only feel so effective. At times, it just feels like I’m drawing from a pile of random effects and hoping the right ones show up rather than creating a strategy.