It turns out Comte de Saint-Germain is not the only card cheat and man of connection in the world of the 18th Century French high society.

Last month I got to go hands on with the first few hours of Card Shark, a beautifully crafted and designed game based in 18th Century France, using a series of card cheating mechanics, a psychological mind map of a story and a gorgeously renaissance style painted aesthetic. To re-iterate Card Shark uses game mechanics to stack decks of cards, signal suits and numbers with a variety of signals, false shuffling, manipulated dealing and reversing cuts to manipulate your way through the seedy underside of the French high society.

As you get further through the game, additions such as card throwing, coin flipping and sword fighting get added in, and whilst the meat and potatoes of the game is always about card cheating, these small side attractions add even more depth to the game than previously. Particularly of interest is the involvement of Sword fighting that comes about half way through the game, that involves memorising which directions attacks come from, and being able to move aggressively when allowed to win a battle. By the end of the game, you’ll have learnt 28 cheating techniques to sweep through the game and swindle people out of their money. The deeper and deeper you get, the more and more involved and difficult these become.

The final stretch of Card Shark was so of the most mind-bending and tight methods of card manipulation in the game. Going so far as to deal specific value cards, by combining collection techniques learnt at the start with card stealing and false cutting techniques given through the middle of the game, to ways to manipulating the shuffle to track your selected cards and ensuring they get dealt to the correct persons, as determined by the way of conversation at the time. The alluring painted aesthetic makes all of the sleights of hand and rifling of cards a beauty to watch. Even with the stress of needing to stack decks correctly and remembering the myriad of card drops, injogs and outjogs, when to shuffle, it never loses its charm and whimsy. Card Shark is a game with very, very strong gameplay fundamentals.

There was a point in the game however, that I found playing with controller compared to playing with mouse and keyboard for one specific mechanic in card marking was at your own detriment. The designers have made the decision that you cannot switch control method mid-gameplay, and whilst this wouldn’t be problematic for the most part. Attempting to paint the correct diamond in a grid, with the controller is slow and janky. With mouse this is easily done and completed rapidly. The suspicion bar increases rapidly during these sections and having the ability to swap control methods at will, to better suit the method of gameplay required, at least on PC, would go a long way. Some failures were from the control method being not as tight as it is for the rest of the game.

Certain rifling techniques are far too rapid with mouse and keyboard but reset obnoxiously often with controller. For the most part, this isn’t a major issue, but for a game that does at times require pretty precise gameplay, having such ineffective control at times is incredibly frustrating and stressful without much need for it. A tightening of the control scheme itself would go a long way.

The story of Card Shark is one that gets more and more sketchy and filled with doubt and illusion as you get through it. Everyone seems to be connected to everyone in some way, and you’ve been dragged into a game of scheming and betrayal 20 years long, simply by chance. Everyone is looking out for themselves, and almost nobody can be trusted. The Comte will sell you out to protect himself, Ireneo is a man of many masks and you can never be quite sure if you’re not being manipulated again. MacGregor is a man out to protect himself, working for an unknown force to keep control of the monarchy and manipulate even someone as powerful as King Louis XV. There is a lot going on in what is a relatively short story.

For most players a first time playthrough will likely sit around the 6 or so hour mark, give or take depending how many times you go broke on your way through. Perplexingly, despite my total gameplay time sitting just under 8 hours, I managed to achieve the Speed Demon achievement for beating the Card Shark’s tester’s time at 2hr 12min and 40sec. I’m not entirely sure how this tracks, but it is also an indicator of how much actual gameplay time there is. Whilst this isn’t particularly worrisome, I wonder about the replayability. There didn’t appear to be many path deviations available throughout the game, and even end game choices didn’t see like they would have affected much deeper change. There is a perma-death game mode available for those who want to keep themselves on their toes, and I would believe this will be the best difficulty for speed-running.

Whilst the game technically has five variants of the ending, it unfortunately doesn’t particularly matter which way you go with it. All five will result in you returning to origins, and the ending itself is the same. Some lore variations occur here, but beyond that there is not much for acquiring the five variations besides the achievements themselves. In a small and nice touch, the Steam version has 52 achievements to acquire, all of which are symbolised by a different card and suit, like a deck of cards containing 52.

Whilst Card Shark may be a short jaunt, it cannot be understand how lovingly and well-thought of a game it is. There is intrigue, depth, difficulty and a level of ingenuity that cannot be understated. More indie developers could and should be taking a note from the book of the team at Nerial, and seeing that sometimes less can be so, so much more. Card Shark is a gorgeous looking, tightly played and enjoyable experience that almost everyone should be looking at trying out.