Card Shark will get you kicked out of Las Vegas

digitaltrends.com:

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.

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.”

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