Summary
- Strategy matters in Buckshot Roulette - items can significantly improve one's chances of victory.
- Items like handcuffs prevent players from playing their next turn, adding an extra layer of complexity.
- Understanding item effects like the magnifying glass and saw can help fans make better decisions in the game.
Buckshot Roulette is a deceptively simple game. This roguelike inspired by Russian Roulette seems extremely straightforward at first but gets more complicated the more one looks into it. For one, the premise of the game, choosing whether to shoot oneself or the enemy, is extremely easy to answer when ignoring items. If shooting the gun is the main means of interaction, the items are what makes that choice interesting.
Even though Buckshot Roulette is fundamentally based on luck, a correct choice of items can significantly improve the player’s chances of victory. This is especially relevant to the items that were added by the Double Or Nothing mode in the Steam release.
1 Cigarette Pack
User Recovers One Health Point
Cigarettes are a straightforward item. Using this item (a pack that, for some reason, only includes one cigarette) lets the player regain one health point. There isn’t a lot of strategy in using this item. If the player is at any point at risk of losing, even remotely at risk, they should use this item.
As with any other item in the game, the dealer can also use the cigarette pack. And just like any other item in the game, it can be stolen with the use of adrenaline. This is, more often than not, the best item to steal, as it prevents the dealer from recovering one life. Other items grant one extra damage at most, so preventing the enemy from healing is almost always the best choice.
2 Handcuffs
The Adversary Skips Their Next Turn
Handcuffs prevent the dealer or the player from playing their next turn. When it is their time to pick up the gun, they will instead struggle with the handcuffs and fail to get free. They will get rid of this item on their next turn, proceeding by picking up the rifle.
This little bit of flavor, the victim struggling to remove their handcuffs on their wasted turn, means that this item can’t be applied twice in a row. If the player has accumulated two or more handcuff items, they must wait one round in between each use. This means that the dealer will always play at least one turn every two.
3 Magnifying Glass
Identifies The Current Rifle Round
The magnifying glass is a simple item. Upon selection, it lets the player see what shell is currently charged in the shotgun. This makes the choice of whether to shoot the enemy or oneself much easier. It also makes using the saw much safer, as this item is functionally useless when used on a blank shell.
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The magnifying glass also makes the beer item much more useful. Drinking beer ejects the current rifle round, and shouldn’t be used unless the player knows it’s a blank. The magnifying glass is the main way to learn whether the round is a blank.
4 Saw
Doubles The Next Shot’s Damage
The saw improves the shotgun’s damage. Instead of dealing one damage, the next shot will deal two. This works for both the dealer and the player and applies regardless of whether one shoots themselves or their adversary. Obviously, this damage boost only applies if the rifle contains a live round, which would deal one damage on its own, too.
No matter what happens, if the round shot is live or just a blank, the shotgun will regrow its tip at the end of the round. This means that the +1 bonus to damage only applies to the shot that happens immediately after using the hand saw.
5 Beer
Ejects The Current Round
For some unexplainable reason, beer lets the player eject a round from the rifle. The idea behind this item is that ejecting a bullet can heighten the chances of revealing a live round. If there are two blanks and one live round, for example, drinking beer should enhance the chances of the player’s next shot being a lethal one.
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The reality is a bit different. Data on hand, beer can be useful but is not quite as good as it feels. If the player ejects a blank round (2/3 chance), they then have a 50/50 chance to deal or receive one damage. The remaining 1/3 chance leads to ejecting the live bullet, concluding the round. Without beer, the player still has a 50/50 chance of dealing or receiving damage if there’s a blank, but they also have a 1/3 chance to deal one damage, represented by the live round.
6 Adrenaline
Steals An Item - Only In Double Or Nothing
Adrenaline is one of the items added by the Steam version of Buckshot Roulette. Those items like to play with probabilities and memorization a bit more than the standard items, but that’s not the case for adrenaline. This item simply allows the player or the dealer to steal one item from their opponent.
Players should note that adrenaline cannot be used to steal the enemy’s adrenaline. Such a mechanic would lead to an endless chain of adrenaline theft, which only ever leads to one player holding every instance of this item. Adrenaline should be used to steal the most useful items in the game, such as cigarettes and handcuffs.
7 Burner Phone
Learn The Polarity Of A Shell - Only In Double Or Nothing
The burner phone is similar to the magnifying glass but is overall more risky to use. The game promises it will grant knowledge of the future. In reality, it just reveals whether one of the rounds in the rifle is a blank or live. The position of the revealed round is randomized every time, but weirdly enough, it isn’t always a future round.
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It might be a bug, and a rare one at that, but the burner phone seems to occasionally reveal the polarity of a round that has already been shot. If this issue is as persistent as it seems, it might significantly reduce the usefulness of this item, as the only safe time to use it would be at the start of a round.
8 Inverter
Changes Shell Polarity - Only In Double Or Nothing
The inverter changes the “polarity,” as the game calls it, of the current rifle round. This means that the currently loaded bullet, the next one that will be fired, will transform from a live round to a blank and vice versa. The inverter is a useful item in a handful of situations. For example, it can improve the chances to hit an enemy with just two blanks and one live round.
The inverter is especially good when the player knows what the next round will be. Most often, those situations will be granted by items like the burner phone and the magnifying glass. Another great moment to use an inverter is when the player knows that only blanks have remained in the rifle.
9 Expired Medicine
40% Chance To Recover 2 Lives - Only In Double Or Nothing
Expired medicine might just be the worst item in the game, but it’s also one of the best ways to turn around a terrible run. Expired medicine has a 40% chance of healing the player for two life points, but there’s a catch. The player also has a 60% chance of losing one health.
All in all, using expired medicine is worth it, but only if the player is ready to swallow more than one pill. If the first one fails, the second has a good chance of succeeding, leaving the player with one additional health point. Even if the third fails, there is only a 6.4% chance that all three will fail in a row.
Buckshot Roulette
- Released
- December 28, 2023
