It’s pure luck gussied up with high stakes and the cool aesthetic of spinning a six-shooter.
That’sBuckshot Roulette, the latest from Mike Klubnika, the dev behindthose excellent horror games about operating machinery.
Great weird machines here too.
In the back room of a dingy nightclub, a demonic-looking dealer waits to play shotgun roulette with you.
Then, you take turns either shooting yourself in the face or shooting your the rival.
If you shoot yourself with a dud shell, your opponent skips their next turn and you go again.
If you take a shot, you are revived by defibrillation and blood transfusions from a clunky machine.
When the shotgun’s empty, the dealer reloads with another random selection.
The round ends when someone has lost all their lives.
You’re aiming to reach and win the third round, when final death is on the line.
The second round introduces items.
At every reload, the mechanical table opens to present you with a box containing random single-use items.
The magnifying glass lets you peek at the shell currently loaded.
Smoking a cigarette restores one life.
Chugging a beer pumps the shotgun to eject the current shell.
Handcuffs make your opponent skip their next turn.
And the hand saw (temporarily) cuts down the shotgun’s barrel to make it deal 2 damage.
The items and the fiendish adversary do make this feel quite Inscryption-y.
launch the numbers on how many of each shell are left in the shotgun.
Decide whether to shoot yourself or the dealer.
Like Klubnika’s other games, giant weird mechanical devices govern all this.
The game table is mechanical, whirring into life with flipping hidden compartments revealing shells and boxes.
Scores are tracked on a machine which hooks into the defibrillators reviving you.
The whole room is full of doodads, some of which remain unexplained.
Even entering your name at the start involves an elaborate machine.
I’m very into this level of mechanical overcomplication.
I really like how his games are small visits to unexplained terrible places.
Spend 5-20 minutes in a terrible other place then return to your life.
Bigger, longer games would struggle to sustain mystery and dread.
His games focus on interacting with tangible mundane reality in otherworldly places.
It’s a great mood.
After this, do also check out Klubnika’sUnsorted Horror.
It’s a collection of short horror games full of strange machines.
It’sone of my other 2023 favourites.
you’ve got the option to get that for freeon Steam.
