21: Dead Man’s Deck

The House always collects

You climb a long stair to a castle nobody remembers being built, and a dealer with a skull for a face explains the rules in under a minute. Draw toward twenty-one. Don’t go past it. Whatever you stake, the House keeps.

Then he straps you to a machine, and you find out what you staked.

Blackjack with a knife in it

• Hit and stand toward a target of 21 — but the right card can move the target itself.
• Everyone keeps a hole card. You can read their total, or you can read their hands. Only one of those is honest.
• Going bust is not the end of it. Burn a trump to claw back under, or stand and take the bite.

Seven cards you choose to carry

Build a seven-card trump deck out of wards, curses, thefts and last resorts — cards that change a number, a rule, or somebody’s mind.

• Playing a trump does not end your turn. It buys you the next one.
• Trumps run on charges, and charges come from winning rounds. Spend early and you’ll be empty when it matters.
• Open packs, strip the fallen for parts, and cut the deck down to the seven you’d actually stake your hand on.

Your body is the wager

Coins are not what’s on the table. The machine is.

• Every round you lose winds your device on one stage.
• Four rounds and it finishes its work. So does the match.
• Break theirs first and their seat at the House falls open to you.

The Kept

Six players sat down against the Dealer before you did. They lost, and they stayed. Now they wear the House’s masks and hold its tables — and none of them can show you their face, which makes them very hard to read.

• The Gilded Smile — brass, fixed in a courtesy it cannot drop
• The Porcelain Saint — white, mended along one seam, and no mouth at all
• The Cinder Crown — riveted iron, a furnace grille still glowing
• The Sheaf — blackened wheat bound with bone wire
• The Ninth Hour — a bronze bell cast as a clock with no hands
• The Green Lamp — signal glass, one lens green, one red

Beat all six and the Mirror of Judgement appears in the courtyard. It only ever leads one place.

Ways to lose

• Campaign — take all six tables and earn your seat opposite the Fate Dealer.
• The Gauntlet — one run, rising rivals, and damage that carries between them. It ends when you do.
• Versus — pass the machine across the table. Only the player sitting sees their own hole card.
• Blood Stakes — the winner takes two cards out of the loser’s collection and keeps them.
• Online — find a rival through Steam, or invite a friend straight to the table. Optional coin purses, escrowed by the House. In-game coins only, no cash-out.
• The Gathering — Beta — up to sixteen players share one courtyard, talk over voice and text, and call each other out. Lose and you leave; the last one standing takes the crown. New, and still being tested.

Between hands

The courtyard is yours to walk. Buy a pack from the fortune-teller and watch the claw fetch it. Strip duplicates at the salvage box. Read the Rogues’ Gallery on whoever is beating you. Search the crates — two or three are worth opening on any given day, and the House leaves notes.

Every candle in this place was lit for somebody.

Reach twenty-one. Don’t go past it.

Interface, subtitles and voice in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese and Polish. Card art is English; a rules box repeats the effect in your language.