Card shark playing cards how to#
Card shark playing cards manual#

Otherwise, Card Shark is an aesthetically pleasing game that takes the design of classic playing cards and implements it into a fully functional narrative adventure. This gates progress as it leaves me to keep restarting until I can relearn the trick and get it correct. Taking breaks in-between help, but also requires that you instantly pick up where you left off, knowing everything by heart. This makes Card Shark even more frustrating when you enter events that you’re not ready for, requiring you to know all your past tricks and see the event to its completion.įrom a user standpoint, it gets really tough to stay motivated to play Card Shark because of these arbitrary mechanics. I’ve commented before that there are no options to review your tricks in the middle of your journey. As a single-player narrative adventure, there’s really no reason to make the game too difficult. Its autosave feature makes for a more exciting adventure, but also tightens the margin of error, making for quite a stressful session.

Card shark playing cards manual#

Needs a manual saveĬard Shark could really use a manual save option to save us some grief. They can also call the authorities or take justice into their own hands, so you’ll always have to be wary. While losing rounds can be part of your strategy, making a glaring mistake will alert the opponent, which results in them becoming instantly accusatory. You have a base camp where you can donate money to the cause, but there’s no option in this location to review some of your tricks, which is a bizarre design choice as it is a safe space for the characters.Īs you go through your con games, what you have going against you is the opponent’s suspicion meter, which rises and falls depending on convincingly you can pull the act. This makes the first 4 hours of the game rather frustrating and repetitive as there are no options to practice in between your journey.

Card shark playing cards how to#

However, as the game progresses, there’s no option to review the tricks you learned (besides the menu telling you what the trick is but not how to pull it off) and the game assumes you’ve already mastered them. You are taught the trick in its entirety, which makes practice rounds difficult. In Card Shark, the basic tricks are quite easy to learn, but the moment they start combining cons, it can take a few practice rounds and some restarts to get them correct. The margin of error when pulling off these cons is quite tight because of the elaborate tricks you learn on the fly as well as the punishing suspicion meter by your opponents. While there are 28 new tricks to learn throughout the course of your Card Shark journey, there are some variations of the same tricks to fool your opponents, and the learning curve can be quite steep. Learning about the grift is definitely a lengthy but also an enjoyable part of the experience. You start off with a tutorial on how a particular grift would work, such as learning how to signal an opponent’s high cards or intentionally rigging the deck to turn the cards into your favor. With an intriguing premise, does the con last long enough to engage you or does it fall flat after a few rounds? Read on for more! The Art of The GriftĪfter a lengthy but intriguing prologue, Card Shark has a simple game loop.

The Comte schools you into a convincing grift and then when it’s game time, you attempt to take as much as you can from aristocrats provided they don’t get too suspicious and run you out of town or worse, shoot you where you sit. In Card Shark, you take the role of an astute mute server who, in a chance encounter with the Comte, finds himself joining a band of rogues who travel across France and swindle aristocrats in card games. Nonetheless, you know you’ll get something different every time, and Card Shark is definitely something else. We could see that in fantastic titles that hit the mark like Death’s Door and Trek to Yomi, but at times it doesn’t really land like with Weird West and Serious Sam 4. Devolver Digital’s bread and butter really involves titles that take a tried and tested premise and then subvert it to create a unique experience.