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21: Dead Man's Deck
Blackjack with a knife in it. Count an 11-card shoe, bend the rules with 155 cursed trumps and outplay six masked Kept and the Fate Dealer. Lose a round and the Bone Press on your arm bites. The fourth bite kills. Bonus: Dead Man's Well, a gothic falling-block game, is in the box.

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Features
Languages:
Interface Full Audio Subtitles
English ✔ ✔ ✔
French ✔ ✔ ✔
German ✔ ✔ ✔
Spanish - Spain ✔ ✔ ✔
Japanese ✔ ✔ ✔
Portuguese - Brazil ✔ ✔ ✔
Spanish - Latin America ✔ ✔ ✔
Polish ✔ ✔ ✔
See all 8 supported languages
Content
Includes Interactive Elements

In-game purchases, Chance based in-game purchases, Online interactivity

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Version 2.0 rebuilds the whole game in Unreal Engine 5. We are staying in Early Access for
about a month so players can put it through its paces before I call it: especially
the import of saves from the original version, online play across real networks, and the
Steam Deck. Weekly patches will follow what you find.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“bout a month from the 2.0 update. Comes once a week has passed with no open crashes
and no open save-import problems.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“with the fixes and balance changes the test month brings. The
original version is removed from the "legacy" branch. Free updates after Full Release are planned,
and we will announce each one when it is real, not before.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The game is complete:- The Long Table campaign with all six Kept and the Final Seat, plus their story chapters
and the ending, and the Dealer's Lesson.- The Undercroft descent with its weekly seeded run, Blood Stakes, the Fortune Claw and
cosmetics.- Online Pride duels and the Gathering, and Pass the Deck.- Dead Man's Well, with Arcade, the Dealer's Trials and online Versus.

All seven languages are in. This month is for finding what we missed.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“With the 2.0 rebuild the game grew into two games in one purchase, and the price moved to
$8.99. It will not rise again at Release. Everyone who bought before 2.0 keeps the game and
every update, and everyone who played before it receives the Founder gift.
”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Every report counts. "The House Is Listening" in the pause menu writes a short report with
the build details (no name, no account id) and opens the Steam discussions so you can post
it. We read the forums daily during the test month, keep a known-issues post pinned, and
patch weekly.”
Read more

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About This Game

Pull up a chair. Strap in your arm.

You sit at the Long Table of a castle that keeps what it wins. Across the felt sits a masked stranger, their left forearm clamped in an iron press, just like yours. At the head of the table, a top-hatted skeleton deals the cards by hand.

The game is twenty-one. The stake is your hand.

Win a round and you breathe. Lose one and the Bone Press turns: the clamp locks, the fingers shake, the bones start to give. The fourth bite kills.

Blackjack, if blackjack cheated back

  • A real shoe you can count. Eleven cards, 1 to 11, one of each, shuffled fresh every round. Every card on the felt and in the burn pile tells you what is left, and what your rival is hiding under their hole card.
  • 155 trump cards. Wards, curses, thefts, swaps and dirty little miracles. Move the target off 21. Steal their last card. Force them to draw. Peek at the top of the shoe. Name their hole card and watch it flip.
  • Bust is not the end. Over 21? Play a trump and claw back under. The round is not lost until you stand.
  • Swear a deck of seven. Trumps run on charges: win a round and take two, lose or tie and take one. Spend them on up to three trumps a turn.

The Kept

Six gamblers sat down against the Fate Dealer before you. They lost, and they never left. Now they wear the House's masks, and every one of them plays with a mind of its own.
  • The Gilded Smile: the greedy host. Very easy, and his tells are honest.
  • The Porcelain Saint: the cautious healer. Stands early and wards everything.
  • The Cinder Crown: the hoarder. Banks his charges, then burns two trumps in one turn.
  • The Sheaf: the reaper. Counts every card and cuts your hand when you lead.
  • The Ninth Hour: the clock. Reads where you stand and plays the round against it.
  • The Green Lamp: the signalman. Learns your habits, bluffs often and plays by House rules. Brutal.
Beat all six and the Mirror of Judgement lights. Behind it waits the Fate Dealer, who does all of it at once, and learns you as you play.

Nobody at this table cheats. No rival sees your hole card or the order of the shoe. If they beat you, they read you.

A story told in ledger ink

Every Kept has a chapter: an introduction in their own voice, and a dossier page that opens only when you beat them. Take the Final Seat and earn the ending. New to the table? The Fate Dealer deals you his own lesson first. It cannot be lost. He spares you. Once.

Ways to bleed

  • The Long Table: the campaign. Six Kept, from very easy to brutal, then the Final Seat.
  • The Undercroft: a roguelite descent beneath the House. 21 landings over three floors, branching paths, a boss at the bottom of each floor, and 21 boons and curses to bargain with. Your press carries its damage all the way down. Every week the whole world gets the same seeded descent, with a Steam leaderboard for the deepest.
  • Blood Stakes: wager two cards from your deck against a Kept. Win and take two of theirs. Lose and yours are gone for good.
  • Play Online: Find a Rival or Invite a Friend over Steam and duel for Pride. Text chat, quick-chat and push-to-talk voice, with mute and block always in reach.
  • The Gathering: up to eight players, one table, a single-elimination bracket. The fallen watch. One takes the crown.
  • Pass the Deck: two players, one PC, a veil between turns.

Between hands

  • The Fortune Claw: a real-physics claw machine, 60 coins a go, over a pile of Common, Rare and Legendary packs. Or pull the lever and simply buy one.
  • Card backs, felt for your side of the table, and finishes for your press: brass, verdigris, bone, gilt.
  • Fourteen titles to carve on the Wall of Names, 34 Steam achievements, and the Rogues' Gallery on everyone who has beaten you.
Coins are earned in play only. No real money, no cash-out, no microtransactions.

Bonus game: Dead Man's Well

Same purchase, same House, a whole second game, right on the title screen. Dead Man's Well is a gothic falling-block game played in a candlelit crypt while the Fate Dealer hurls curses into your well.
  • Arcade: Classic, Speed, Combo and Endurance, with six modifiers to twist them.
  • The Dealer's Trials: 20 chambers of handmade torment, and the Reaper waiting at the end.
  • Versus: online over Steam. Clear lines and bury your rival.
  • 40 trumps, 8 curses, nine sculpted block skins, themes, backdrops and music to unlock, and weekly leaderboards.

Play it your way

  • Full controller support. Every table action can be rebound on keyboard and pad.
  • Interface, subtitles and voice in 7 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Polish.
  • Comfort settings: gore Restrained or Implied (the camera looks away at the bite), Reduce Motion, flash reduction, and switches for camera shake and rumble.
  • Text size from 80% to 200%, three colour-vision modes, high contrast, and subtitles with speaker names.
  • Game speed up to 2×, and every beat can be skipped. No timed input outside online play.

Reach twenty-one. Keep your hand. The House is dealing.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

This game contains AI-generated content that was created during development and ships as fixed files. Nothing is generated while you play.

- Images: card paintings, menu and loading paintings, and some textures were generated with AI image tools, then edited, painted over and composited by hand.
- 3D: some character and prop parts began as AI-generated meshes and were rebuilt, cleaned up, rigged and textured by hand in Blender.
- Voice: the character voices and their dubs in six languages were generated with ElevenLabs from scripts written for the game.
- Music: the score was generated with ElevenLabs Music and Suno from briefs written for each scene and character.
- Sound: many sound effects were generated with ElevenLabs and edited and layered with recorded sound libraries.
- Text: story, interface text and translations were drafted with AI assistance, then reviewed and edited by the developer.

Game design, rules, the rivals' behaviour, the castle and table layout, and the final say on every asset are the developer's own. The rivals do not use generative AI: they play by hand-built logic and cannot see your hidden card.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Dead Man's Deck depicts injury to the hand. Each lost round tightens a press clamped on a player's forearm: blood appears and grows with each stage, and the fourth stage crushes the hand and the character dies at the table. It is shown briefly, with sound and without lingering close-ups. The Comfort setting "Gore: Implied" turns the camera away at the moment of the bite, replaces the blood with dark grime and leaves only the sound and the hand's flinch. Flashes can be reduced and camera motion can be turned down.

The game is played with in-game coins and card packs that are earned only through play. Nothing can be bought with real money and nothing can be cashed out. There is no real-money gambling. Online play includes text chat (filtered by Steam) and optional push-to-talk voice chat with players you do not know, with mute and block always available.

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
    • Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 8 GB / Intel Arc A380
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 4 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: DirectX 12 graphics card required (Shader Model 6). Internet required for online duels, the Gathering, leaderboards and Steam Cloud. Keyboard and mouse or controller.
    Recommended:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit)
    • Processor: Intel Core i5-10400 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
    • Memory: 16 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX 6600 / Intel Arc A750
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 4 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: DirectX 12 graphics card required (Shader Model 6). Internet required for online duels, the Gathering, leaderboards and Steam Cloud. Keyboard and mouse or controller.
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