Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Features

Card Shark will get you kicked out of Las Vegas

Giovanni Colantonio
By

Cheating in video games is usually frowned upon. If you enable aim bots or wall hacks in a game like Call of Duty: Warzone, you’re probably going to find yourself banned – or worse, thoroughly embarrassed. Winning a few games simply isn’t worth the mark of dishonor. In Card Shark, however, cheating isn’t just encouraged: It’s the entire game.

Developed by Nerial, the team behind the popular Reigns series, Card Shark is unlike anything I’ve ever played. It’s a narrative adventure game set in 18th-century France about a peasant who gets sucked into the world of petty criminals and cheats. It’s technically a card game, but not in the traditional sense. With its one-of-a-kind premise, Card Shark is a must-play curiosity that completely rethinks what gameplay can look like.

Related Videos

Read ’em and weep

In Card Shark, players control a young mute peasant in pre-Revolution France. His life takes a left turn when he meets Comte de Saint-Germain and is roped into a simple card cheat. In a plot that’s almost a little reminiscent of Nightmare Alley, players slowly rise through the ranks of society, swindling rich French aristocrats with a variety of tricks. That rags to riches story intersects with a wider political mystery that revolves around a conspiracy dubbed the “Twelve Bottles of Milk.”

Card Shark - Release Date Trailer - Nintendo Switch

The story itself is full of historical intrigue, but Card Shark is especially notable for its unique gameplay. As the story progresses, players sit down at poker tables around France. Before each card game, Saint-Germain introduces a different cheating technique that the duo will use to trick their opponents. The clever part is that players are never actually playing a round of poker, so much as they’re properly executing signals to Saint-Germain in a series of minigames.

Cheats start simple. In the opening tables, I simply pose as a waiter and peek over players’ shoulders while pouring a glass of wine to see their cards (all while being careful not to over or under pour). Using a tablecloth, I signal to Saint-Germain what their best card is by wiping down the table in a certain direction. A counter-clockwise wipe signals that his best card is a heart, while scrubbing side to side indicates it’s a diamond.

The cheating techniques quickly become more involved. At one table, I lay a reflective surface down on a table and deal cards over it to secretly see my opponent’s cards. Signals become complex, as I can tell Saint-Germain exactly what cards my opponent has by holding my hand in a specific way to indicate suit and dropping a card on the table a certain way to hint at the value (holding a card up and dropping it down signals that someone at the table has an ace, for instance).

A character slips a deck of cards into a waiter's pocket in Card Shark.

By the end of the game, I started wondering if Card Shark was going to get some players in serious trouble. Some of its cheating techniques are ingenious and feel realistically executable with a quick enough hand. While pocketing cards or performing deceitful shuffles is much harder than pressing a few buttons at the right time, Card Shark sincerely feels like a cheater’s almanac at times.

Take the lessons it teaches to Las Vegas at your own risk.

Wipe the table

Card Shark is one of the most inventive video games I’ve played this year, completely spinning the concept of genre on its head. Despite having cards, I can’t really call it a “card game.” It’s an unclassifiable title that’s more about finding a compelling way to turn real-world sleight of hand into engaging gameplay. Whenever I could successfully pull off a trick without arousing too much suspicion, I felt like an overconfident mastermind.

The results can admittedly be a little mixed, as the game can sometimes feel more like a long series of tutorials with not enough chances to test the tricks. The emphasis on story creates some conflicts with its general structure too. Failure results in a trip to jail (or sometimes death), which usually just means that you’ll have to sit through the same narrative sequence again when you return to the table.

A character deals cards in Card Shark.

Perhaps accounting for how tiring that experience can be (especially as cheats become harder to execute in the late game), Card Shark features three difficulty modes that change the experience. The easiest mode is the most preferable of the three, as its added flexibility helps prevent those momentum stalls. If you feel so inclined, there’s a roguelike-style permadeath difficulty too, though the narrative nature of the game doesn’t feel like a fit for that approach.

Even with some structural shortcomings, Card Shark is a delight from start to finish. Its cheating minigames are both satisfying to execute and surprisingly educational. I’m not sure that any developer will ever try to copy its notes, which makes it all the more appealing — a true Joker in video game canon.

Card Shark is out now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
You can compete in the Olympics eSports Series by playing a $1 baseball game
A pitcher holds a ball in WBSC Baseball Power Pros.

A $1 baseball game shadow dropped by Konami during a Nintendo Direct, WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros was a very odd release in February. That said, the purpose of its launch and low price point is becoming clearer as the International Olympic Committee revealed that it's one of the featured games in its Olympic Esports Series 2023 lineup.
WBSC eBASEBALL: POWER PROS - Launch Trailer - Nintendo Switch
Starting this month, players can start competing in featured games like  Power Pros to qualify for the Olympic Esports Finals 2023, which will take place at Singapore's Suntec Centre between June 22 and June 25. A more arcade-like and low-poly take on the sport than something like MLB The Show 23, Power Pros was a fairly small-scale and simple game that mainly stood out because of its low price point. Clearly, its international baseball focus and approachability enticed the IOC, who've decided to elevate its esports status.
Esports has been popular for quite a while, although the most popular esports titles are games that can't really be emulated in real life, like Starcraft 2, League of Legends, Call of Duty, and Fortnite. The IOC is taking a decisively different approach with its esports competition, instead choosing to include games that emulate real-world sports, with the IOC calling it a "virtual and simulated sports competition." That ultimately results in an unexpected esports game lineup that also consists of Tic Tac Bow (archery), Virtual Regatta, Virtual Taekwondo, Zwift (cycling), Gran Turismo (motorsport), Just Dance, Tennis Clash, and Chess played on Chess.com.

This unorthodox approach to esports is why a Konami game like Power Pros, which came out less than a month ago, isn't the most in-depth baseball simulation out there, and only costs $1, made the cut. Still, there is something exciting about the barrier of entry for an official Olympic competition being this low.
WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros is available now for PS4 and Nintendo Switch. 

Read more
Sea of Stars’ unique RPG combat has already won me over
Zale and Valere from Sea of Stars

When I first started up the new demo for Sea of Stars, the upcoming indie RPG that draws inspiration from classics like Chrono Trigger, I wasn't hooked after my first battle. Its combat system confused me at first, with shifting type weaknesses and a mana pool that somehow felt like it was only an inch deep. Only after I read about the combat in-depth did I learn to appreciate its quirks, like its signature "lock" system. If only it teased a more emotionally gripping story, I'd be convinced it's worth playing from the start to end.

Sabotage Studio’s latest project serves as a prequel to its other game, The Messenger. Our heroes, Zale and Valere, are the only ones capable of using Eclipse Magic, a special power capable of defeating the Fleshmancer’s monsters. It's up to the two protagonists to stop their foe with their combined powers -- something that Sabotage takes care to highlight in the demo with the aforementioned combat.
C-combo breaker!
Sea of Stars blends just the right amount of traditional and modern gameplay in its battles. Players can directly choose if a character attacks, casts a spell, or uses an item during their turn. Each character has a mana bar that refills whenever they use their normal attacks, as well as skills that they can cast when they have enough MP. Ideally, the player should take advantage of type weaknesses. Attacks charge a combo meter that lets characters use dual attacks, which sometimes hit more weaknesses than the characters can on their own.

Read more
Metroid Prime 4: Release date prediction, trailers, gameplay, and more
Samus holding cube in Metroid Dread.

One of Nintendo's lesser-known yet still beloved franchises is Metroid -- a series that originally began on the NES, putting us in the shoes of bounty hunter Samus Aran. Now, over 35 years later, fans are eagerly awaiting the next entry in the series, Metroid Prime 4, which has been in the works for several years.

The Prime series takes the formula introduced in the 2D games and turns it into a 3D, first-person adventure that still very much feels like Metroid, despite the perspective shift.

Read more