One of the trends that I’ve been watching with some enthusiasm over the past year or so has been developers combining roguelike sensibilities with different gambling and table games. Of course, the most impressive of these has been the poker-oriented Balatro, with other options like the claw machine-based Dungeon Clawler, and the coin pushing in Raccoin (still not on Switch yet) also proving to be diverting fun as well. We now have Black Jacket to add to the list, obviously working with the base of blackjack, but while it has some good ideas and ways to add some layers of complexity and interest to the game, I didn’t find it as reliably compelling to continue to return to by comparison.

The one element that it does have on its side that isn’t shared by its contemporaries is a little bit of story, which goes pleasingly dark as it turns out you’re playing in order to have enough coins to essentially escape from Hell, once you have enough to satisfy the ferryman. Add to that the fact that each opponent you’ll face has their own bits of dialogue, and there are some additional things to glean about them and the overall situation, and there is some appeal outside of the core gameplay that’s a nice value add. While it’s generally restricted to the cards themselves, I also found some of the game’s art to be appealing as well, certainly feeling appropriate to the environment.

In terms of the gameplay itself, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, but if you’re patient it will slowly come together. One challenge is that the rules of Blackjack are far simpler than poker, so more effort needs to be put in place to try to obfuscate the fact that randomness rules when there are so few rules to apply, and cards to draw before your fate is sealed. This is further complicated by the special cards some of your foes will have that can pull the rug out from under you, even if you feel like you’re doing well. That means that you’ll need to make use of every one of the somewhat limited tools at your disposal, and that starts with simply where you choose to lay down your cards, since in some situations that can be critical. Knowing when to hold a card in your sleeve to either save for later, or even to simply keep your current hand alive, can also be critical. You’ll also want to try to leverage your own special cards you’ll have to work with, but unfortunately I didn’t always find the in-game instructions on how best to use them to be as helpful as they could have been, so without some trial and error that can add on a layer of frustration at times. There’s an interesting game here, to be sure, but given its comparative simplicity, it also bumps into its limits more often than some of its competition.