Skip to main content

Card Shark will get you kicked out of Las Vegas

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.

Recommended Videos

Read ’em and weep

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.”

Card Shark - Release Date Trailer - Nintendo Switch

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 minigames.

Cheats start simple. In the opening tables, I simply pose as a waiter and peek over players’ shoulders while pouring a glass of wine to see their cards (all while being careful not to over or under pour). Using a tablecloth, I signal to Saint-Germain what their best card is by wiping down the table in a certain direction. A counter-clockwise wipe signals that his best card is a heart, while scrubbing side to side indicates it’s a diamond.

The cheating techniques quickly become more involved. At one table, I lay a reflective surface down on a table and deal cards over it to secretly see my opponent’s cards. Signals become complex, as I can tell Saint-Germain exactly what cards my opponent has by holding my hand in a specific way to indicate suit and dropping a card on the table a certain way to hint at the value (holding a card up and dropping it down signals that someone at the table has an ace, for instance).

A character slips a deck of cards into a waiter's pocket in Card Shark.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

By the end of the game, I started wondering if Card Shark was going to get some players in serious trouble. Some of its cheating techniques are ingenious and feel realistically executable with a quick enough hand. While pocketing cards or performing deceitful shuffles is much harder than pressing a few buttons at the right time, Card Shark sincerely feels like a cheater’s almanac at times.

Take the lessons it teaches to Las Vegas at your own risk.

Wipe the table

Card Shark is one of the most inventive video games I’ve played this year, completely spinning the concept of genre on its head. Despite having cards, I can’t really call it a “card game.” It’s an unclassifiable title that’s more about finding a compelling way to turn real-world sleight of hand into engaging gameplay. Whenever I could successfully pull off a trick without arousing too much suspicion, I felt like an overconfident mastermind.

The results can admittedly be a little mixed, as the game can sometimes feel more like a long series of tutorials with not enough chances to test the tricks. The emphasis on story creates some conflicts with its general structure too. Failure results in a trip to jail (or sometimes death), which usually just means that you’ll have to sit through the same narrative sequence again when you return to the table.

A character deals cards in Card Shark.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Perhaps accounting for how tiring that experience can be (especially as cheats become harder to execute in the late game), Card Shark features three difficulty modes that change the experience. The easiest mode is the most preferable of the three, as its added flexibility helps prevent those momentum stalls. If you feel so inclined, there’s a roguelike-style permadeath difficulty too, though the narrative nature of the game doesn’t feel like a fit for that approach.

Even with some structural shortcomings, Card Shark is a delight from start to finish. Its cheating minigames are both satisfying to execute and surprisingly educational. I’m not sure that any developer will ever try to copy its notes, which makes it all the more appealing — a true Joker in video game canon.

Card Shark is out now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Giovanni Colantonio
As Digital Trends' Senior Gaming Editor, Giovanni Colantonio oversees all things video games at Digital Trends. As a veteran…
Wii classic Donkey Kong Country Returns gets an HD remaster
donkey kong country returns hd dk

During the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced that an HD remaster for Donkey Kong Country Returns will release on January 16, 2025 for the Nintendo Switch.

It's unknown which studio is handling the remaster, but the game's original developer was Retro Studios. It was the first game in the Donkey Kong series that did not involve original developer Rare, which Microsoft acquired in 2002.

Read more
The best RPG you’ve never played is coming to Nintendo Switch
The hero of Fantasian runs.

Mistwalker's Apple Arcade exclusive RPG Fantasian is making its way to consoles under the new title Fantasian Neo Dimension. Fantasian was originally released in two parts in 2021, and Fantasian Neo Dimension will contain all the game's content when released on Nintendo Switch for the 2024 holiday season.

During the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, Fantasian Neo Dimension was revealed to be coming to Nintendo Switch in time for the holidays. Fantasian is a turn-based RPG featuring an amnesiac protagonist named Leo who awakens in a dimension known as the Machine Realm. In the Apple version, players would tap on locations to move Leo around the maps and engage in random battles. However, using the Dimengeon system would allow players to disable random battles against foes they already faced and store them in the titular Dimengeon to explore uninterrupted. There is a limit to how many fights can be stored, so players cannot avoid every fight in the game.

Read more
Volgarr the Viking 2 will take you back to your Ghosts ‘n Goblins days
A viking slashes a tree in Volgarr the Viking 2.

Developer Digital Eclipse is working on a surprising project: Volgarr the Viking 2. The 2D retro sequel will launch on August 6 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The news is an out of left field reveal. The first Volgarr the Viking game released in 2013 and was made as an ode to 1080s classics like Ghosts 'n Goblins. Despite being a small release, it sold over 1 million copies over the past decade. As revealed during today's Guerrilla Collective stream, the series is coming back with a new sequel by Digital Eclipse, the team behind this year's Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story.

Read more