Real gamblers play russian roulette with shotguns. That is the core concept of Buckshot Roulette, the Inscryption-looking game of blinksweat and bulletworry. It's been out for a while now but the developers have just added a fun extra - a 4-person multiplayer mode.
They teased this multiplayer mode earlier in the year but just posted the update on Steam yesterday. The game remains one of uncertain trigger pulling. A handful of shells - some duds, some live - are loaded into a shotgun in a random and unseen order. Players then take turns pointing the gun at one another (or themselves) and committing their lives to lady luck. Click! Phew, this one was a dud.
But look, what's Nipplemancer69 doing? He's slugging a beer, ejecting a shell, clicking on a mysterious gadget, and smoking a cigarette... Wait, wait, don't point that at me, Nipplemancer69! Have you even kept count of the shells correctly!? Stop. STOP.
Click.
Oh thank heavens. Between each reloading of the shotgun you get a bunch of items to make use of against your friends, you see. A cell phone with a mysterious voice on the other end, for example, who tells you what the fifth or sixth shell will be. Or a gizmo that lets you steal a device straight out of your opponent's pile. All this on top of the main game's health-regenerating cigarettes and beer cans that let you eject a shell.
There are other devices I'm far less keen on. These cause players to miss a turn, for instance, or reverse the turn order of the entire table. It's possible as a result to play a whole round without ever even laying hands on the gun. Turn-skipping mechanics in board games annoy me for the same reason. It's frustrating to sit there and helplessly watch an entire game happen around you. And in a chatless internet game setting, it really invites people to quit. I much prefer the more interesting gadgets, like the do-hicky that reverse the "polarity" of the shell in the chamber.
It's best done with pre-existing pals - there's no
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