Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers

Thank you for taking the time out to speak with us. I’ve been playing the Dungeon & Degenerate Gamblers demo for a ridiculous amount of time and it is great, so congratulations. 

Let’s get this out the way first. There will be comparisons to a certain other card based game that came out in 2024. There is a lot that sets D&DG apart but how do you deal with the obvious comparisons that will come?

I always take any comparison between Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers and Balatro as a compliment, because Balatro is clearly a fantastic game! 

It’s fascinating because both games started with the same idea of a casino card game roguelike with twisted rules and wacky cards, but playing them you can see what different directions both developers took that same idea in. 

I think the most obvious difference upon looking at both is the theming. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers focused on a darker tone, as the tone and atmosphere was really important when making the game. I really wanted to communicate how we were not glorifying gambling and wanted to show a world where gambling was a sinister evil that had corrupted everything and everyone it touched.

This was carried over when it came to designing the gameplay. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers steers away from the high score chasing of Balatro and focuses around “combat”. Every step you take is a battle against one of the tavern dwellers who have a unique way of playing and their own little flair and flavour. That being said despite the differences I think it is pretty safe to say if you enjoy one you’re very likely to enjoy the other!

Are you big casino players yourselves? 

No, not at all. One of my big inspirations for the game is from my bachelor party when we visited a casino and left after just a few minutes without having spent or gambled any money because the vibes were so off. 

What made you go with BlackJack/Pontoon/21?

I found that blackjack was a great base game for a few reasons. The first is that the basic rules are very simple: hit until you have a high number and then stand. This combined with the popularity of blackjack meant that D&DG was a very simple game to teach new players, especially since you are introduced to the crazy additional cards one by one, so you never feel overwhelmed with new information.

One way I like to think about game design is in terms of a complexity budget. The concept is that there’s only so much complexity that you can add to the game before you go over budget, and then no one can understand how to play your game. The simplicity of the hit/stand decision in blackjack meant that I could spend almost all of my complexity budget on the card effects, which meant I could really go wild with them! Fun examples of this are the Glitched Card, which takes the suit, value, and effect of a random card, or the Jumping Jack, which switches whose side it is played on every time you hit. 

What were the biggest difficulties in balancing the game?

There are just over 300 cards in the game, so one of the hardest things has been the sheer number of possible combinations that can be created if you get the right cards. It’s a tricky act trying to make sure that you can break the game with outrageous combos if you find them, but that it doesn’t happen so easily that it loses the fun moment of finally building a breaking deck. 

The other challenging part is that in D&DG your opponents use cards from the same pool that the player has access to. This symmetrical combat style is relatively rare in roguelike deckbuilders, and I think a big part of that is because it makes balance very difficult! If I want to buff a card, I have to consider not only the strength of that buff in the hands of the player, but also any opponent that uses it or can take it from the player.

Do you worry that there will be any backlash over encouraging gambling? Are you prepared for how to counter that? (Like Balatro, I didn’t find this to feel like gambling and as someone with ADHD I absolutely do not gamble as I know I can be easily swallowed up by addiction).

The narrative in the game itself is very critical of gambling, and particularly those that sit at the top of gambling companies and profit from the addiction of others. It might be naive, but my hope is that the game can trigger some reflection on how the gambling industry works and how prevalent it is in our lives now. And if it can help even one one person gamble less because they’re playing D&DG instead, then I’ll consider that a win. 

Are there any plans to expand on the game? Multiplayer perhaps? Or is it only ever a single player experience?

While I am immensely proud of how the game is right now, I’d love to continue to make the game better after release. I’ve got lots of ideas for fun stuff to add and my card to-do list is still massive! Multiplayer would be really cool too, it’d be great to be able to try out some of the decks I’ve built against other people, so I’m not counting it out!

What comes next for Purple Moss Collectors? 

Hopefully more Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers! I love making this game and the community around it is amazing too. 

I’ve also managed to build up a decent backlog of unplayed games due to using all my free time to make D&DG, so I’m excited to play some video games again!