Double Skunk

Cribbage with an engine under it

Double Skunk is a cribbage roguelite. Underneath, it's the real game played by the book, and between hands you build something that bends it.

Powerups sit on your rail and change what the count is worth. One pays extra for every fifteen after the first. Another knocks the rival back down the board the first time they show a pair. When one of yours pays off big, its animal walks onto the table and acts it out. Fifteen Bell's fox rings a brass bell over your show. Drumline's heron beats a snare drum beside the run you just pegged.

Your pocket holds cards that break the rules once. Play the Four into the count and it walks the total back while the rival's peg slides down the board. The Mine takes the crib whoever dealt. Pegs bring their own rule to the whole run. The Spy sees what the rival threw to the crib, and the Hoarder carries extra pockets.

Every point moves your peg, hole by hole. Tiles on the board pay out gold, cards and powerups, but only to a peg that lands on them.

Never played? The Coach deals you in

You don't need to know cribbage to start. The Coach teaches it in a short warm-up at the parlor table. In the first hand the Coach points at each card and says why it counts. In the next the cards are yours. You throw, you peg, and you count your own hand by tapping the fifteens and pairs, with a hint whenever you're stuck. Then you're straight into your first real match.

Know the game already? Skip the warm-up and sit down.

Climb the cribbage mountain

The Long Tally is the climb. Twenty-one rivals stand between a back-room parlor and the top of the cribbage mountain, each with a painted face and a voice of their own. Captain Blue plays one suit and tells you which. He still wins. Brother Saunders brought a thermos to the Tundra and has never offered you any.

Higher up, the tables bring house rules of their own. Some put a chess clock on you, and near the top it's muggins, where any points you miss in your own count go to the rival. Some rungs let you mark a rank or a suit for good, and from then on those cards wear a tell on the backs of the rival's hand.

Losing never ends the climb. You pick how it stings when the campaign starts. Hold your spot and replay the same rival on a fresh board, or slide back a rung and win that trophy again.

Reach the summit and find out what's beyond. The Beyond runs on past the top, where every match is one long game of duplicate cribbage and a heat meter climbs as you play. When it boils over, the rival gets a free hole, and it boils faster the higher you go.

One deal, every player, every week

Each week brings a new challenge, and everyone plays the same deal. It's duplicate cribbage, so every hand comes round twice, once from each side of the table, and the luck of the cards cancels out. Your build and the rival's are fixed for the week, the rival plays at Expert, and the leaderboard ranks how far ahead of the rival you finished.

Every week has its own twist, and Skip and Skat bicker about it before you sit down.

Play a friend, or play it straight

Invite a friend through Steam or find a stranger with Quick Match. Ranked games move your Peg Rating and your place on the season leaderboard. If either game crashes mid-match, you can both come back to the same hand. And when your rival plays a good one, you can tip your hat.

Offline, the AI plays from Easy to Expert. Set the house rules before the deal. Play a best-of match or duplicate, turn muggins on, or try reverse, where the first peg home loses. Pure Cribbage switches every new system off, for the game the way your grandmother played it.

Company at the table

Skip and Skat are the skunks on the box. They host the weekly challenge, and when you play a card from your pocket they climb onto the table and do it themselves, shoving the rival's peg back or staking a claim to the crib you just took.

The Pedlar runs the shop partway round each board. He'll buy back what you've outgrown, and he's always heard something about your next rival.

The Coach stays with you after the warm-up and has a word about your throws.

Every hand, graded

When the match ends, the summary grades your game against the book. It shows how much your throws and your pegging gave up against the best you could have done, how kind the cuts were, and which hand cost you the most. Open the review and replay any hand, with your keep beside the book's and the better card beside the one you played.

Win by a mile and DOUBLE SKUNKED slams across the rival's portrait. That's where the game gets its name.

Fully voiced in English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish.

A note on AI-generated content

Double Skunk is made by one person. The character art, the short animated scenes, the music and sound, and the spoken voice lines were generated with AI tools and then selected, edited and assembled by hand. Nothing is generated while you play. The cribbage rules, the scoring engine and the balance are ours.