Don’t cheat. That’s one of the phrases I was most often told when I was young. Over time, I realized that it doesn’t have a literal meaning, but rather is a warning of the often negative repercussions that cheaters often experience. For me, the concept of “don’t cheat” has become “don’t get caught cheating”. It may be reprehensible, but we’ve all cheated at some point in our lives, whether it’s robbing the bank at Monopoly or looking innocently at a classmate’s test when we’re stuck on a question. Cheating is frowned upon and should be, but there’s no denying that avoiding getting caught can become an art, and that’s exactly what Nerial aims to show in his latest indie game, Card Shark.
Card Shark is unlike any other game you have played before. It’s about cheating your opponents and the tale takes you, a quiet young waiter, on an adventure alongside the experienced cheat Comte de Saint-Germain. As you can imagine, the story is all about making as much money as possible without being discovered or facing the consequences of being caught in the middle of a trick. And of course, without you failing your tricks and going bankrupt for it.
However, where Card Shark truly differs from other experiences of this nature is that this game takes you through a crash course in card tricks and cheating. From marking cards and switching decks without raising suspicion to figuring out how to rig a coin toss, anything goes. And you’ll need a photographic memory to survive, because if you screw up, your targets will exact revenge and seek justice in their own way.
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Fortunately, the process of mastering these techniques is not as complicated as it is in real life. Here, you don’t need quick hands, a poker face, or great skill to masterfully shuffle decks while risking screwing up your tricks. That doesn’t mean, however, that each technique (out of the 28 in total) has its own mechanics and movements that you need to control, be it basic injogging (a movement that lets you remember the location of the map you want) or note duplicate cards from your deck to ensure they are not dealt when reshuffling.
In terms of how it works within the game, Card Shark is a title that focuses on quicktime events. If you’re using a controller, you can move the analog stick one direction to shuffle, the other to jog, and so on. Add to that almost instantaneous situations where the trick will fail if you press a key too early or too late. It may seem easy, but Card Shark doesn’t remember all your moves (you can turn on the hint option if you need to), so there will often be times when you’ll hit the wrong button out of confusion and mess up the whole trick. It’s not an easy game, and that can be both a strength and a problem.
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It’s a strong point because it gives you a good idea of the seriousness of your actions. The game is set in 18th-century France, where society wasn’t as civilized as it is today, meaning that if your tricks are spotted you could end up shot in the temple. You can imagine that every move and decision you make must be made with the utmost care. In Card Shark, the player has to be really focused, otherwise failure is guaranteed. And that’s one of the reasons this title can be a little frustrating, as the number of techniques to not only learn but master grows so fast that without some affinity for card tricks you’re doomed to fail.
That’s because in the middle of a trick you don’t have time to think about your actions. At the bottom of the screen is a bar that measures how aware your targets are that you’re cheating on them. When it fills up completely, your response can range from getting up and walking to “warming up.” The bar only starts to fill up when you spend too much time thinking about your next move, and it goes even higher when you screw up. It’s there to describe your prey’s perception of what’s going on. Every time you get suspicious (e.g. with a very big first bet), the bar will rise higher and higher. Therefore, it is important to think carefully about each action, to be fluid in your movements and most importantly… not to screw anything up.
Card Shark isn’t a very long game, and it doesn’t have an overly broad or complex narrative, but what it does have is a core set of mechanics that will make you stop playing, cheat, and keep on becoming a more effective and successful cheater . It’s not easy at all, but that’s part of the charm because if it were easy, anyone could do it.
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And that’s why I was fascinated by this amazing original indie game. It’s not for everyone, and I imagine it will be a slightly frustrating experience for many, but if you think, study, and practice with a cool head, Card Shark offers a rewarding gaming experience that makes you feel like you have the Learning the basics of the game’s outs, card tricks and giving you the tools to pull them off. From my own experience, I can say that this will leave you with a mischievous, evil smile that will stay on your face even after you quit the game.
