Summary
- Dungeon & Degenerate Gamblers offers blackjack battles with a unique card deck twist, highlighting casino predatory nature.
- Balatro turns poker into a high-stakes scoring against numbers with unique cards, combos, and increasing difficulty.
- Peglin merges pachinko gambling with rogue-like gameplay, requiring optimized builds to defeat bosses and progress.
The procedurally generated nature of a rogue-like video game can make every run unique, and make every choice feel like a gamble. Naturally, then, it follows that some developers have doubled down on the flashy betting and brutal chance of the casino to make vicious games that require clever strategy or tricky builds to succeed.
Be it with playing cards, dice games, slot machines, or pachinko machines, these developers took the rogue-like formula and used it to make high-stakes casino games a matter of life or death. Of the games that combine these elements, these are the best casino style rogue-likes available right now.
5 Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers
A Blackjack Gauntlet
- Release: August 8, 2024
- Platform: PC
- Developer: Purple Moss Collectors
While the story is simple, Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers manages to produce a sharp commentary on the predatory nature of massive casinos while challenging the player to battle their way past others who have gotten lost in the dungeon. Gamers play blackjack using their own deck of cards, and the difference in the distance to 21 for each player will be dealt in damage to the combatant with the lower value.
On its face, this seems like a game entirely ruled by chance, for which it might be easy to learn the optimal playstyle for. However, game complicates things further after every battle by adding a new card to the player's deck. These cards can be chosen and range from standard playing cards, to the 13 of 'Nothings' or a business card. Each card has its own value and special effects that will change how the player ventures through the dungeon.
First-time adventurers may get lost in the possibilities. However, as players fail in the dungeon, they will learn more about what works and what can effectively take out enemies faster while letting them sustain less damage. Blackjack is always at the heart of the game, but beneath that is a conflict against those manipulating things from higher up while playing right into their hands.
4 Balatro
Endless Poker Possibilities
Balatro
- Released
- February 20, 2024
- Developer(s)
- LocalThunk
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Android, iOS
Balatro has taken gamers by storm, to the point that the developer issued an apology when releasing the game on mobile devices for ruining productivity the world over. Much like Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, Balatro takes the simple formula of a well-known card game — in this case, Poker — and turns it into an intense bout of all-or-nothing scoring against faceless and merciless numbers. Pitted against the 'blinds,' players will have a few hands to clock up enough points by playing powerful combos.
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In between matches, a shop will offer a selection of cards. Some can make certain poker hands worth more, others remove certain things from the deck. There are also regular cards, as well as jokers that will invert the way the game is played by changing the multipliers and mechanics in a whole slew of different ways. It is no surprise that fans of deck-builders, rogue-likes, and collectathons have formed a huge fanbase for Balatro.
The game offers increasing difficulty and a variety of different decks that each have unique effects. This makes for near-infinite replayability that is likely to hold the attention of hardcore gamers who want to topple the hardest modes with every Joker for the elusive final acheivement.
3 Dicey Dungeons
Yahtzee Adventures
Dicey Dungeons
- Released
- August 13, 2019
- Platform(s)
- Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Developer
- Terry Cavanagh
This game turns a cast of tropey characters (which feel straight from the pages of a TTRPG) into dice, forcing them to battle for their freedom. Lady Luck herself is the villain in the Dicey Dungeons. Players will take on the mantle of anthropomorphic dice who each play differently and have access to different weapons: the warrior, the thief, the witch and more.
The casino vibe is put to the forefront as players summon flashes of light and neon victory screens to battle their way to freedom. Super hard runs can be unlocked, and since the weapon selection and enemy approaches are randomized, the difference between victory and defeat is often a roll of the dice. Choosing which dice to assign to which weapon, and how to build a selection of tools for every eventuality within the restrictive inventory system, makes this a game for fans of rogue-likes and deck-builders alike.
2 Luck Be A Landlord
Fighting The Slot Machine For Profit
- Release: October 6, 2020
- Platforms: PC, iOS, Android
- Developer: Trampoline Tales
Luck Be A Landlord seems a tad simplistic at first glance. Players move into an apartment and are gifted a complimentary slot machine. Their winning from this machine are the only method they have of paying their rent, and that rent increases after every payment. Things open up from there, and get a lot more exciting and agonizing.
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Players can add symbols to their slot machine, each with different values and effects. This quickly becomes a spinning slot machine that holds incredible combos that are always just one position away. Combining flowers and bees will start to make a good valuable build, for example. Players can also add in the sun or rain to boost the flowers' value, or something that can kill the bees, removing them and giving a big boost of money. Luck Be A Landlord invites players to find a bevvy of weird and wonderful combinations, and the Steam workshop only explodes the number of possible combos to infinity. Reaching the end and defeating the landlord is only the start of the adventure of defeating new runs on harder difficulties or being rich enough for players to be taken out by their own guillotines.
1 Peglin
Pachinko Goblin Adventure
- Released: August 27, 2024
- Platforms: PC, Android, Nintendo Switch
- Developer: Red Nexus Games
Peggle popularized the digital version of pachinko, a Japanese gambling machine that is the equivalent of a penny push or a slot machine. Peglin takes the ball-dropping, peg-hitting formula that makes up the gambling market in Japanese casinos and brings it into a rogue-like adventure.
Players score points on the pachinko board as damage output. Different types of balls move differently, interact with pegs differently, and even damage differently across the worlds that the cute little green goblin will venture through. Defeating bosses will reward players with unique items that will help them through, but things get tougher towards the end of a run. Any build that isn't optimized to the fullest will come back to bite players.
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