High Stakes

A card game where your life’s on the line.

Every round you will be dealt 9 cards face-down. The goal of the game is to flip as many cards face-up as possible. There is one Vampire card and 8 value cards ranging from 2 to 9. There is always only one copy in each card on the board. If you flip the Vampire card you lose the round.

Complete rows or columns to unlock Hint Tokens.

If you think you know where the Vampire card is you can use the Stake to stab it immediately for more points.

Flipping a card will raise the stakes. If you flip over all value cards or stab the Vampire the stakes will be added to your winnings. If you flip the Vampire the stakes will be subtracted from your winnings.

You can use the button in the lower left corner to pass a round. You will keep the stakes but you need to pay a penalty of the value of two card flips.

Each match lasts 5 rounds.

Use the blood you win to unlock opponents with higher payouts. You win the game if your reach 5000ml. Your progress will be saved between matches. But if you lose all your blood your savegame will be wiped and you need to start over.

Win Streaks – If you beat the game you will start a Win Streak. Beating the game again will increase the Win Streak by one. If you ever die or restart a game in progress you will lose the Win Streak. An exclamation mark behind your Win Streak count means you are pushing your all-time best Win Streak. The game will also keep track of how many attempts you’ve made so far.

Credits:

This game was created as part of the A Game By Its Cover Jam 2020. The goal was to create a game based on of the cartridge covers from the Famicase Exhibition 2020. The cover to High Stakes was created by Tyler Q Anderson and Jamie C Lee.

The game was written and designed by Krystian Majewski, an Independent Developer and the host of the Lazy Devs Academy video channel.

The music was composed by Gruber Music.

The game is written entirely in Pico-8.

Just Have Fun!