21: Dead Man's Deck

Pull up a chair. Strap in your arm.

You sit at the Long Table of a castle that keeps what it wins. Across the felt sits a masked stranger, their left forearm clamped in an iron press, just like yours. At the head of the table, a top-hatted skeleton deals the cards by hand.

The game is twenty-one. The stake is your hand.

Win a round and you breathe. Lose one and the Bone Press turns: the clamp locks, the fingers shake, the bones start to give. The fourth bite kills.

Blackjack, if blackjack cheated back

A real shoe you can count. Eleven cards, 1 to 11, one of each, shuffled fresh every round. Every card on the felt and in the burn pile tells you what is left, and what your rival is hiding under their hole card. 155 trump cards. Wards, curses, thefts, swaps and dirty little miracles. Move the target off 21. Steal their last card. Force them to draw. Peek at the top of the shoe. Name their hole card and watch it flip. Bust is not the end. Over 21? Play a trump and claw back under. The round is not lost until you stand. Swear a deck of seven. Trumps run on charges: win a round and take two, lose or tie and take one. Spend them on up to three trumps a turn.

The Kept

Six gamblers sat down against the Fate Dealer before you. They lost, and they never left. Now they wear the House's masks, and every one of them plays with a mind of its own.

The Gilded Smile: the greedy host. Very easy, and his tells are honest. The Porcelain Saint: the cautious healer. Stands early and wards everything. The Cinder Crown: the hoarder. Banks his charges, then burns two trumps in one turn. The Sheaf: the reaper. Counts every card and cuts your hand when you lead. The Ninth Hour: the clock. Reads where you stand and plays the round against it. The Green Lamp: the signalman. Learns your habits, bluffs often and plays by House rules. Brutal.

Beat all six and the Mirror of Judgement lights. Behind it waits the Fate Dealer, who does all of it at once, and learns you as you play.

Nobody at this table cheats. No rival sees your hole card or the order of the shoe. If they beat you, they read you.

A story told in ledger ink

Every Kept has a chapter: an introduction in their own voice, and a dossier page that opens only when you beat them. Take the Final Seat and earn the ending. New to the table? The Fate Dealer deals you his own lesson first. It cannot be lost. He spares you. Once.

Ways to bleed

The Long Table: the campaign. Six Kept, from very easy to brutal, then the Final Seat. The Undercroft: a roguelite descent beneath the House. 21 landings over three floors, branching paths, a boss at the bottom of each floor, and 21 boons and curses to bargain with. Your press carries its damage all the way down. Every week the whole world gets the same seeded descent, with a Steam leaderboard for the deepest. Blood Stakes: wager two cards from your deck against a Kept. Win and take two of theirs. Lose and yours are gone for good. Play Online: Find a Rival or Invite a Friend over Steam and duel for Pride. Text chat, quick-chat and push-to-talk voice, with mute and block always in reach. The Gathering: up to eight players, one table, a single-elimination bracket. The fallen watch. One takes the crown. Pass the Deck: two players, one PC, a veil between turns.

Between hands

The Fortune Claw: a real-physics claw machine, 60 coins a go, over a pile of Common, Rare and Legendary packs. Or pull the lever and simply buy one. Card backs, felt for your side of the table, and finishes for your press: brass, verdigris, bone, gilt. Fourteen titles to carve on the Wall of Names, 34 Steam achievements, and the Rogues' Gallery on everyone who has beaten you.

Coins are earned in play only. No real money, no cash-out, no microtransactions.

Bonus game: Dead Man's Well

Same purchase, same House, a whole second game, right on the title screen. Dead Man's Well is a gothic falling-block game played in a candlelit crypt while the Fate Dealer hurls curses into your well.

Arcade: Classic, Speed, Combo and Endurance, with six modifiers to twist them. The Dealer's Trials: 20 chambers of handmade torment, and the Reaper waiting at the end. Versus: online over Steam. Clear lines and bury your rival. 40 trumps, 8 curses, nine sculpted block skins, themes, backdrops and music to unlock, and weekly leaderboards.

Play it your way

Full controller support. Every table action can be rebound on keyboard and pad. Interface, subtitles and voice in 7 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Polish. Comfort settings: gore Restrained or Implied (the camera looks away at the bite), Reduce Motion, flash reduction, and switches for camera shake and rumble. Text size from 80% to 200%, three colour-vision modes, high contrast, and subtitles with speaker names. Game speed up to 2×, and every beat can be skipped. No timed input outside online play.

Reach twenty-one. Keep your hand. The House is dealing.