These devices are real enough that you'll see a short config process on a screen when certain new parts are activated. You're playing a deadly game with a seemingly demonic dealer, sure, but it's governed by mechanical elements. I also appreciate how the the contrast between the vague mood and the complexity and specificity of the devices works to ground everything. Bigger, longer games would struggle to sustain mystery and dread. Spend 5-20 minutes in a terrible other place then return to your life. Because they're so short, they can blast images and ideas to build a mood then end without explaining. I really like how his games are small visits to unexplained terrible places. This device, opened with a key, is the best name entry doodad I've seen in a game | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Mike Klubnika I'm very into this level of mechanical overcomplication. Even entering your name at the start involves an elaborate device. The shotgun itself is also a great device, with the pleasing clack-clonk that's almost as cool as a Russian Roulette player spinning the revolver cylinder. The whole room is full of doodads, some of which remain unexplained. Scores are tracked on a machine which hooks into the defibrillators reviving you. The game table is mechanical, whirring into life with flipping hidden compartments revealing shells and boxes. Like Klubnika's other games, giant weird mechanical devices govern all this. It's not the most complex puzzle game but it's fun to feel out strategies and ride the odds, and I really dig the tone, and I adore all this weird machinery. Decide whether to use items this turn or save them, perhaps hoping to wing it on probability until you can deploy a devastating combo. Decide whether to shoot yourself or the dealer. Run the numbers on how many of each shell are left in the shotgun. The items and the fiendish adversary do make this feel quite Inscryption-y. And the hand saw (temporarily) cuts down the shotgun's barrel to make it deal 2 damage. Handcuffs make your opponent skip their next turn. Chugging a beer pumps the shotgun to eject the current shell. The magnifying glass lets you peek at the shell currently loaded. At every reload, the mechanical table opens to present you with a box containing random single-use items. Here's me playing up to the end of round 2 You're aiming to reach and win the third round, when final death is on the line. The round ends when someone has lost all their lives. When the shotgun's empty, the dealer reloads with another random selection. If you take a shot, you are revived by defibrillation and blood transfusions from a clunky machine. If you shoot yourself in the face with a live shell, well, thankfully you have a number of lives each round. If you shoot yourself with a dud shell, your opponent skips their next turn and you go again. Then, you take turns either shooting yourself in the face or shooting your the rival. Each round starts with the dealer revealing a selection of live and dud shells then loading them into the shotgun in a random order. In the back room of a dingy nightclub, a demonic-looking dealer waits to play shotgun roulette with you. That's Buckshot Roulette, the latest from Mike Klubnika, the dev behind those excellent horror games about operating machinery. But take Russian Roulette, swap the revolver for a pump-action shotgun, mix up live and dud rounds, and add Inscryption-esque items which let you change the rules, and now you have a more skillful game. A grizzled mafioso whose cheeks glitter with fragments of other people's teeth has as much chance of winning Russian Roulette as a sleepy five-year-old in SpongeBob pyjamas. It's pure luck gussied up with high stakes and the cool aesthetic of spinning a six-shooter. Russian Roulette is just an edgy version of Snakes & Ladders.
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