While I've played a lot of roguelike deckbuilders and some online CCGs, I never had much familiarity with traditional playing cards. But after playing a ton of Balatro, I picked this game up after looking for more card-related games. It's really excellent! The cheating techniques start off relatively simple and escalate to a delicious level of complexity making them really satisfying to comprehend and execute correctly.

I was expecting this to be more of a MKB type game and I was somewhat surprised by the game's recommendation to play this with a controller. But as you keep playing the game the reason becomes clear -- the game is as much about executing the cheats with stealthy dexterity as it is about understanding the sequence of cards and how to arrange them. On a gameplay level, the satisfaction of executing some of these cheats is comparable to executing a series of successful parries in Sekiro or notes in a rhythm game.

I was also really surprised by how good the story and atmosphere was. It puts you smack dab in the middle of the 18th-century France. The setting is impeccably realized with great art, witty writing and good music. There's a ton of eye-popping drama and some surprisingly funny art and dialogue. I found myself giggling a lot in many scenes.

As an experience the game far exceeded my expectation and I recommend it highly.

P.S. I really liked the difficulty curve of the tricks, but it can sometimes be frustrating to repeat an entire sequence of trick repetitions after messing up one step. One solution for this is to quit to the title menu if you know you messed up in the middle of the trick. It will let you repeat the trick if you go back into the save without loosing too much progress.

I like the art, I like the setting, I like the story, but the main gameplay loop was not for me. It feels legitimate to warn others: it is based on REPETITION of ATTENTION, MEMORY and TIMING SKILLS. This is like learning to perform card harder and harder regular card tricks with a timer, and there is not a lot of room for mistakes, and be certain that if you don't like the first 30 minutes, it will only get worse for you. If you love it right away and only wish it gets more complicated and challenging, be my guest as I pour you French wine. Otherwise, too bad.

Really enjoyed this game! I think the coolest part is the techniques you learn to cheat in card games all appear to be real and useable! They definitely require adept slight of hand but you really feel like you are learning a very interesting and under-the-table skill while you play through this game. I highly recommend using a controller. It feels very right and tactile moving your thumbs on the analog stick to do slight of hand tricks. Game took me about 6 hours to beat, but there are alternate endings and a new game plus. I'm sure I'll feel the desire to play such a satisfying game again in the future.