Card Shark

Card Shark sends you into the salons and gambling parlors of 18th-century France with one goal: cheat your way to the top. You start as a tavern accomplice running simple marking schemes for the Comte de Saint-Germain, and gradually learn the full lexicon of card-cheating techniques — false shuffles, deck switches, false deals, mirrors, marked cards, signaling systems between accomplices.

Each technique becomes a small skill-based minigame. Master the gestures, time them correctly when an opponent looks away, and the round goes your way. Get caught and the consequences range from public embarrassment to a duel at dawn. Your ill-gotten gains buy entry to higher-stakes tables, where the marks are wealthier, the techniques more sophisticated, and the conspiracy underneath the gambling world starts to surface.

Developer Nerial (Reigns) and game creator Arnaud De Bock (Pikuniku) collaborated with visual artist Nicolai Troshinsky on the ornate hand-illustrated style — period-accurate ornate plates that look pulled from an 18th-century engraving. Andrea Boccadoro composed the orchestral score. The campaign carries you from rural towns to remote mansions to the royal court, each location adding new techniques and new political stakes to the long con.