Cheating Death

Death is a gambler. Death is also a cheat.

Every soul that turns up gets a seat, a hand of cards and one shot at a better afterlife. They play it straight, because they think that is how this works.

You are Death. You play the same poker they do, with one extra rule that belongs to you alone: you can buy your way out of it.

Cheating, in one paragraph

There is a pocket at the edge of your side of the table, the cheat zone. Any card you slide into it stops being a card you play and becomes money. Two of a kind buys a small favour. Two pair buys a nastier one. Four of a kind buys something they do not recover from. Press the button, those cards burn, and the cheat happens immediately, in the middle of your own turn.

That is the whole game in one decision. Every card in the pocket is a card missing from the hand you still have to win with, and it does not come back when you draw. Cheap tricks every turn, or one enormous one you spent three turns saving up for.

Sixteen cheats. All of them unfair.

• Read the two face down cards in the middle before anybody else can see them
• Take their best card. Not a copy of it. It leaves their hand and arrives in yours
• Or knock it straight into the graveyard, if you would rather they just lost it
• Wipe the five cards in the middle and deal five new ones, after they have already committed to the old ones
• Grow a sixth finger, so one more card fits in your hand
• Cut two cards off the size of their hand, for the rest of the duel

The first time you pull one off you get the whole show. After that it is written into your cheat book forever, and the book is the collection: every cheat reads ??? until the day you finally use it.

You never get caught. They never cheat back. Do try to feel bad about it.

A turn, quickly

Eight cards for you, face up. Eight for the soul, face down. Five cards in the middle, three of them face up and two of them hidden until the end. They commit first, face down, so you know how many cards they are betting on and never which.

Arrange your side. Play up to five cards. Park whatever you want in the pocket. End the turn, and everything flips at once. Each side makes its best five out of its own played cards plus the five in the middle, and then both sides hit each other at the same time. Nothing is compared, so a good hand never protects you, it only hurts more. Ninety determination, down to zero, and the seat is empty.

Or play best of rounds, where nobody has health, the better hand simply takes the round, and four rounds take the soul. You choose which way a run is won before it starts.

Multiplayer: cheat where somebody is watching

Real one on one duels against another person, and this time both of you cheat.

Nothing about it is hidden. The moment you fire a cheat, the other player is told which cheat it was and exactly which cards you burned to pay for it. Anything lasting sits on their screen with your name on it for the rest of the duel. They can click the graveyard and read the receipt. They know you shrank their hand. They know who took their ace.

What stays secret is what you are holding and what is still sitting in your pocket. You are never hiding the crime, only what you are saving up for, and that turns out to be the better half of the bluff.

• Sixty seconds a turn, so nobody stalls
• Seven emotes, none of them polite. "Any century now."
• Cross play: the browser version here and the Windows download sit at the same table
• No account, no lobby list, no friend codes. Press PVP and you are looking for someone. If the table is empty you still get a duel

Also in the box

• Tutorial. Four turns against a student who died face down in a library. It teaches the pocket, which is the only thing that needs teaching.
• PvE run. The whole ladder, one duel per soul, results at the end.
• Cheat book. Every combination, what it costs, what it buys.
• Profile. The face and the card back you turn up with in PvP.

Controls

• Left click moves a card between your hand and the play zone
• Right click moves a card between your hand and the cheat zone
• Drag puts a card anywhere
• Space ends the turn
• Esc closes a panel or pauses

Notes

• The browser version keeps your cheat book in the browser's own storage, so it is separate from a downloaded copy and clearing site data wipes it.
• PvP connects the two players directly. Most home connections are fine, strict networks (office wifi, some mobile carriers) can block it, and you get a duel either way.
• The Windows build is signed with our own certificate rather than a bought one, so Windows will name the publisher as Zupa Team and still say it does not trust the signature. Unzip and run Play.exe.

Credits

Zupa Team. Four of us, one jam.

• Alex Slavski, captain, game design, code
• Kacper Predkiewicz, game design, sound and music
• Konrad Jakubczak, game design, UI/UX
• Ivan Serhiienko, game design, art

Music, free to use and credited as the licence asks:

• "Blacksmith" by Conquest, freetouse.com
• "Medieval Village" by Walen, freetouse.com
• "Imbolc" by Zambolino, freetouse.com

Type: Pirata One by Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Nicolas Massi, PT Sans by ParaType. Both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Built for GameJam8 on our own Electron engine, Zupa. No frameworks, no bundler, no dependencies.