Scoundrel is a solitaire game played with ordinary playing cards. It's also a solo dungeon adventure. Read the rules (
PDF,
alternate PDFs,) watch
a tutorial and playthrough (~8 min.,) or play
in your browser.
I've become low-key obssessed with this type of "Roguelike Solitaire" game, and
Scoundrel—developed by
Zach Gage and
Kurt Bieg—may be the most influential. It was released in 2011 and has seen spikes in interest over the years, with its
latest boost coming via
this explanatory video from the
Riffle Shuffle & Roll YouTube channel.
Scoundrel Rules Summary:
- Before play, remove the red Aces and Face cards and Jokers (they are not used.)
- Note your starting health at 20.
- Cards are valued at their number, with Aces high. So, 2-14.
- Deal four cards to create a room. Clearing three of them starts the next room (the fourth follows/is carried to the next room.)
- After a room is dealt you can flee (but not twice in a row.) Scoop all the room cards and put them at the bottom of the deck.
- Black cards are monsters. They must be defeated to be cleared.
- You always defeat them, but they will deal [their number] damage.
- Diamonds are weapons. They must be equipped to be cleared.
- They block [their number] damage when used.
- You can only equip one weapon at a time (place it below the room cards and discard any previous weapon.)
- Fresh weapons can attack anything, but once used they can only be used against a weaker monster. Put the last monster killed by your weapon next to it as an indicator.
- If you don't have, can't use, or don't want to use a weapon you fight barehanded and take full damage.
- Hearts are healing potions. They must be drunk to be cleared.
- They restore [their number] points of health, up to your max of 20.
- Only the first potion taken per room will have any effect.
- If you win, your score is your health (plus the value of the last card, if it was a potion.) If you lose, it's zero minus the value of the remaining monsters.
Notes: You can flee from
good rooms, which is a useful way to move items and/or weaker monsters to the endgame. It's often wise to fight barehanded to avoid degrading your weapon. There seems to be some confusion about whether a monster that kills you is considered defeated for the purpose of scoring, but my reading of the rules is that you take it with you.
The weapon degradation mechanic is interesting, but does conjure an amusing image of wielding a weapon with corpses impaled upon it.
In true roguelike fashion,
Scoundrel is hard. Even with decent strategy you can expect to lose at least 3/4ths of your games. The deck is literally stacked against you: the black cards deal 208 points of damage while you can recover 54 from potions. The diamonds have to do some heavy lifting.
Since there are extra cards just sitting there, various homebrew rules have been created, most of which are some kind of aid to the player. The most popular are adding some or all of the red cards back as characters like
blacksmiths (who can remove monsters from a weapon) or
merchants (who will trade you health for weapons.)
If you don't play a variant that re-introduces red face cards, you can use them to keep track of health: Jack = 1, Queen = 2, King = 3, Ace = 4 (i.e. 10 less than their game values.) Flip them to indicate damage. This keeps the entirety of the game confined to a standard deck of cards, at the cost of extra playing space. Alternately, you could use just five cards and practice your binary arithmetic (20 is 10100.)
There have been numerous ports of
Scoundrel to the web and mobile platforms, and even
several for
PICO-8, and at least
one for the
Playdate. Fans have made
themed physical card decks (YT, downloadable art in the description) and
3D printable cases for the cards. One redditor came up with a method of playing it
in one hand.
LEGACY
Card Crawl
Released in 2015 (I think; that's when its awards are dated)
Card Crawl is a game for iOS/Android/Steam. It was
inspired by
Scoundrel and extends it in a few ways, including adding inventory and the use of both hands and a bag to manage it. It also adds special cards that put it out of the realm of playable with a standard deck.
Donsol
Designed by John Eternal,
Donsol was originally
released in 2016 as a mobile game. It "accidentally ended up quite similar" to
Scoundrel. Currently,
Donsol ROMs are available for Nintendo and
Uxn/Varvara platforms. There's also a browser-playable implementation at the top of that page that's easy to overlook. The download page summarizes the game as well as I could, but the biggest difference from
Scoundrel is that red faces and aces are used with all worth 11 points, which would be a help for the player, but black Queens are now 13, Kings 15, Aces 17, and Jokers (Donsols) are
21 point monsters. If you thought
Scoundrel was going too easy on you, give this a try.
Mythic Dungeon Crawler
Released in 2022 as part of a
Kickstarter for fantasy-themed playing cards, this takes inspiration from
Card Crawl but is playable with a standard (ideally fantasy-themed) deck.
The rules are free to
download , along with an optional playmat (actually two, with different styles of health counters,) and an "expansion" that gives a map with different buffs/debuffs per room. There's a semi-official
Mythic Dungeon playthrough by games YouTuber Sir Thecos (skip the first 12 min. if you don't want to see the pretty cards.) Note that he was working from an earlier version of the rules and some clarifications have been made since. In particular, he's under the impression that potions must be taken upon being handled (
Scoundrel-style.)
Mythic Dungeon Crawler Summary:
Play is as
Scoundrel, except:
- All cards are used, including two Jokers.
- Your health starts at 20, but optionally ("Easy Difficulty") can be set to 25.
- Red faces and aces are called 'allies' (diamonds) and 'healers' (hearts) but functionally are higher value versions of the pip cards. Aces are high and worth 14.
- Fled rooms are shuffled into the deck.
- If the room has a monster with weapon damage (carried over from the previous room,) the weapon is discarded before shuffling.
- You can flee twice in a row, but the second time you take five points "fear" damage. You can't flee thrice in a row.
- You have three spaces for holding inventory, two hands and one bag.
- You must have a free hand to equip a weapon or drink a potion.
- Your bag can hold one extra item. You can't use items from the bag without a free hand space, but you can swap items between hand and bag if they haven't been used (i.e. no monsters on shields or Jokers.)
- Slain monsters are looted by placing them face down in your bag, unless the space is used to hold an item, in which case they are discarded. (The cards are your score.)
- You're allowed to discard an item from the room if you have no free spaces in your inventory.
- Diamonds can function as weapons OR shields, depending on whether you attack or "provoke" a monster into attacking you. You decide when it is first used.
- If used as a weapon, place it on a monster. If the weapon is equal or higher, the monster is looted and the weapon discarded. If not, the monster now has a value of the difference.
- If used as a shield, place the monster on it. If shield is higher, it now has a value of the difference. If not, the shield is discarded and any difference is applied as damage. Loot the monster you provoked and any on the shield.
- With two shields, only one can block each attack.
- Shields may not be discarded if they are partially used.
- Monsters can be "provoked" into attacking you whether or not you have (or wish to use) a shield (similar to barehanded fighting in Scoundrel.)
- Jokers take up an inventory space, but they can in turn hold one card (including monsters) and optionally return it to the dungeon (if there's an empty room space.)
- The Joker is discarded once the item on it is used or moved (e.g., between hand and bag.)
- Your score is the number of monster cards in your bag (not their value) when you exit the dungeon. There is no score if you lose. Scores are for winners.
There are also rules for the specific decks they sell, which are effectively variant rules. The
earlier rules on the Kickstarter page has more of them, which are related to the art on their cards.
Notes:
Mythic Dungeon Crawler is much more winnable than
Scoundrel; I manage in the 80% range. The diamonds are nerfed (e.g., a ten will block ten points damage, vs. an ideal 94 in
Scoundrel), but the inventory system and additional red cards more than make up for that. The extra hearts alone add another 50 potential health points. There is still room for some clarification in the rules, e.g. at the end of the dungeon, do monsters on a shield count for your score (I'm guessing yes,) and can you leave while holding a monster on a Joker? (I'm guessing no.)
The game design has some indavertently(?) amusing implications. The "allies" (red faces and aces) take a space, so you apparently have to hold their hands (or stuff them in your bag!) You're also constantly "provoking" monsters who seem to be unwilling to attack you otherwise, you jerk.
Zach Gage has many previouslies, mostly games, on the blue: 2022, 2019, 2016-05, 2016-03, 2009.
