Within the first few notes of the Balatro title screen, I can feel my stress melting away. The bright yet inviting blend of colors, in concert with its soothing main theme, are an antidote to all the world's ills. New card game Deckline is almost the exact opposite; designed to inject you with a vicious cocktail of despair and paranoia, it drops you into a war where all is lost. Command has abandoned you. You're trapped indoors with no ammo, no supplies, and no hope of rescue. As the inevitable closes in, all you can do is lighten the mood with one final hand.
Reminiscent of the nightmarish atmosphere of Buckshot Roulette, card game most popular across former Soviet states.
For those unfamiliar, Durak is played using a 36-card deck, with each player dealt a starting hand of six. Of those that remain, the bottom card is flipped to determine the game's trump suit. From there, the 'attacking' player may place any card, or multiple of the same rank, on the table. In order to defend, their opponent must block each attack with a higher-value card from the same suit, or any from the trumps.
Stop all the attacker's moves, and the roles are flipped. Fail to do so, and the defender must collect all of the played cards and add them to their hand, before giving the attacking player another turn. If you're left with fewer than six cards, you can draw from the pile to fill your stock back up. This back-and-forth continues until one side is able to get rid of their entire hand, thus claiming victory.
Of course, there's a more pressing issue at hand in Deckline, so you may not even reach that point. Developer Kreidpix teases "several diverse endings" to its story mode, along with the option for an infinite competitive mode featuring a leaderboard if you just want to keep playing. Whether you'll be able to spend that long in its dread-stained hovel without feeling the need to duck out is another issue altogether.
Deckline is out now on Steam, priced at $2.99 / £2.49. There's a 10% launch discount available through Wednesday May 21, meaning you'll pay just $2.69 / £2.24 if you buy it before then. Find it here if your day has been feeling a little bit too cheerful.
Alternatively, tour more theaters of conflict with the free Steam games to play in 2025 if you're after something new with no entry cost.
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