My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 184 Explosion
There are three more chances to fold...

The black cat silently recited to itself, then selected and discarded the five smallest cards.

Among these smaller cards, there were none of the "special cards" he needed. After all, if he had the chance to give his hand special effects, he would definitely choose the cards with larger numbers.

The essence of the pair strategy is to play special cards with bonuses, and then use the card effects of your Joker cards to increase the final score.

Especially the Black Cat deck, which consists of five Joker cards, is a style that increases the multiplier.

After using one discard opportunity, the black cat got another Q, forming a pair with the special Q that hadn't been discarded before.

Unfortunately, this is just a blank Q card with no special bonuses.

Black Cat looked at the score on his left and then mentally calculated the score he could get by hitting the pair of Qs.

not enough……

Not enough...

Black Cat didn't even need to calculate the final number; he knew halfway through that playing the pair of Qs still wouldn't reach his target score.

The score he got from hitting Q was less than a quarter of his target score, and what he needed now was much more than a quarter.

He knew very well that unless the pair of cards he played had a special bonus, he would not be able to reach the score he wanted.

The black cat frowned as it stared at the screen, its brain racing.

Two special high cards...

He recalled the high-end cards he had added with special effects along the way.

The simplest way, of course, is to get A, K, or even J!
A and K are the two cards I pay the most attention to, and almost all of them have been given special abilities.

Although the face value of the Jack is lower than that of the A, K, and Q, the special effects that you add to the Jack are quite good!
There's also a glass card that doubles the multiplier. For a player like him who can only play pairs, a card that can multiply the multiplier is incredibly important!
Moreover, the side effect of it possibly breaking after use is completely irrelevant at this point.

After all, he only had one chance to play a card!
And what lies before us is the final boss of the final level!

There are two special J cards remaining: one is a laser card with a 10x multiplier, and the other is a multicolored card with a 1.5x multiplier.

These are all brands that work very well!

While laser cards are quite effective, they still can't compare to cards that can be multiplied.

Since there are only two pairs, there are only two opportunities to multiply them, so the multiplication sign is even rarer than the plus sign.

The black cat discarded its five lowest cards again and drew five new cards.

I was lucky this time, I got an Ace and a Jack, and they were both special cards!

However, he didn't have any extra Aces and Jacks, so he couldn't form a pair.

Only one chance to fold left...

The black cat looked at its hand.

At this moment, he even had five cards of the same color in his hand.

That is, a flush.

Should we fight?

The moment the black cat had that thought in his mind, he dismissed it.

The multiplier for a flush is indeed higher than that for a pair at the very beginning of the game.

However, after so many rounds of external investment and upgrades, the odds of pairs have completely surpassed those of flushes by many times!
He cannot win by playing any other hand.

Unless you play a pair.

Having abandoned his illusions, the black cat pondered how to use his last chance to fold.

He can discard up to five cards, and he currently has four low cards in his hand that he can discard without hesitation.

The remaining four cards are high cards.

Special card A, special card Q, regular card Q, and special card J.

The answer is obvious: it's the Q, the only card that isn't a special card.

Although discarding the Q means he can no longer guarantee a pair, the problem is that this pair of Qs doesn't bring victory; keeping them only provides a false sense of security.

One last gamble!
The black cat selects five cards and discards them!

His heart skipped a beat the moment the five new cards jumped onto the screen!
He saw a special color!
Special card!
Special cards with versions, enhancements, or sealing wax!

All five new cards were acquired, and the system automatically shuffled the deck.

The black cat spotted it immediately!
Glass J and Foil A!

He got both pairs!
Unfortunately, A is the most useless one.

The foil effect can be increased by fifty yards.

Ran and egg.

The situation is clear; Black Cat doesn't even need to calculate it!
There's no point in calculating anymore; he only has the chance to play a card now, not the chance to fold.

His strongest hand was a pair of Jacks!

Black Cat played a pair of Js and looked at the screen with anticipation.

Prayers...

Hopefully, the final number will be enough for him to pass the game.

However, many people in the live chat didn't understand this move.

Why not play A?

"Play A!"

"Did you just play a pair of two cards instead of a flush?"

"finished"

"No, did the guys ahead of you just enter the live stream?"

After all, "Joker" has just been released, and many viewers watching Black Cat's live stream have not experienced the actual game; they are purely good at talking.

The scoring in "The Joker" is very complicated. Even Black Cat, after experiencing it for more than an hour, only dared to say that he had a slight understanding of it and dared not say that he had completely understood it.

Only casual gamers dare to say: No one understands Joker better than me.

After hitting a pair of J, the system starts automatically calculating the score through code, and the score on the screen starts jumping wildly.

Accompanied by crisp sound effects and a tense background music, Black Cat, as a player, was completely captivated.

All the meticulously crafted subsystems, together with Black Cat's expectant, nervous, and apprehensive heart, gave birth to the complete game experience of "The Clown Card".

They are indispensable and complement each other perfectly.

The efforts of every staff member were perfectly showcased at this moment.

Every adjustment to the visual effects, every improvement to the digital algorithms, and every reconstruction of the sound effects has contributed to the final quality of the game.

Just like now, Black Cat's J is using a special effect to bring his score closer to the final goal.

Finally, to his delight, the final score barely exceeded the target score, and a red flame border representing the surpassed score burst forth!
Although we only narrowly exceeded the target score by a tiny bit, that was enough.

With a bang, the number with a red flame border was added to his total score!
His total score also exceeded the required score to pass the level!
The black cat relaxed, let out a sigh of pleasure, and smiled.

One hour and fifty-seven minutes.

In less than two hours, Black Cat completed "The Joker" for the first time.

If he chooses to request a refund at this point, Black Cat can even play "Joker" for free within Steam's standard two-hour refund period.

Of course, he would never do that.

He is a fan of Megvii Games and Lightswallow Studio. He spends money partly to play the games and partly to support them.

More importantly, this playthrough is clearly not the complete experience of "The Joker". Everyone knows that completing a roguelike game is just the beginning; there's always more exciting content to come.

Whether it's a second playthrough, a more difficult and complex mode, or other expanded content.

Refunding now would be like swallowing a date whole, or Pigsy eating a ginseng fruit.

Seeing that the black cat successfully scored enough points with the right J and cleared the game, the comments section instantly displayed a face-changing magic trick.

"666666"

"Sorry, I'm too stupid to understand the streamer's moves."

"Holy crap, you can do that?"

"Besides the numbers, could you also take a look at the card effects?"

"The big black dog has a really clear mind."

Black Cat instantly felt an unparalleled sense of pleasure, and after completing the game for the first time using the default red deck, he unlocked the other decks.

Each deck provides a different benefit to the player. For example, the blue deck increases the number of plays by one, the square deck limits the hand to only two suits, and the painted deck increases the number of cards in the hand by two and reduces the number of slots for the Joker card.

It's fair to say that the core experience of using different decks is completely different.

This is why players can keep playing the game "Joker".

Not only does the randomness within the game itself increase the player's sense of novelty and reduce fatigue from repetitive content, but the content outside the game is also very important.

The biggest advantage of roguelike games is that they can be played repeatedly.

Compared to games that lose most of their playability after a single playthrough, roguelike games have a longer shelf life.

But what's the cost?

The cost was naturally borne by the game developers.

Creating a great roguelike game requires far more brainpower than other types of games.

This is why roguelike games are almost all indie games, and there are no AAA games.

Making roguelike characters seamlessly integrate into the game while maintaining logical consistency is extremely difficult.

The larger the scale, the more difficult it is to design meat pigeons, and the more contradictions there will be in the design.

Designers can casually incorporate roguelike elements into large-scale games, but it's difficult to make roguelikes the backbone or even the soul of a game, as is the case with indie games.

Meanwhile, the black cat was already immersed in the random pleasure and did not hesitate to use its newly unlocked deck to start the next game.

This time, he's going to try other styles!
……

……

……

After its release, "Joker" jumped from the top ten in the Chinese region during the pre-order period to become the top-selling game in the Chinese region on Steam in less than four hours!
Many people thought this game might be popular, but no one expected it to be this popular!

Even if Light Swallow Studio's first two games were hits, surely they can't replicate the same success by suddenly changing the genre of games they make?
Moreover, they're making card games, a genre that's already very mature and has a plethora of excellent titles.

It's important to understand that card games are a genre unlike other game types; they didn't begin with the advent of video games.

Card games and CRPGs are similar in that they have become popular all over the world even before video games existed.

Even in the era before personal computers, players still enjoyed board games, tabletop role-playing games, and card games.

These are all traditional game genres.

Therefore, it is very difficult to come up with new ideas and innovations in card games.

Not to mention, the game medium is still the most traditional playing cards.

However, "The Joker" did it.

They did it effortlessly in an unbelievable way.

Anyone who has worked in the game design industry or is an amateur enthusiast will be amazed by the game's ingenious underlying logic when they first understand it.

The ancient game of poker feels surprisingly natural and blends seamlessly with the Joker card game.

The game uses Texas Hold'em as its core gameplay, and incorporates elements of modern roguelike games such as off-game economic development, card acquisition, and deck management, making it a truly seamless design.

Any competitor looking for something to criticize will feel utterly powerless after purchasing and experiencing "The Joker".

I dare not open my eyes, hoping it is just my hallucination.

What makes you think you can make a game like this?
How could you make a game like this?

How dare you make a game like this?

However, Qingyan Studio did just that.

Once again, their roguelike game topped the Steam China bestseller list.

These three are all roguelike indie games, and they became wildly popular online entirely because of their exceptional game quality.

All game streamers across the Chinese internet are playing this game.

Even those streamers who don't usually play single-player games, indie games, or roguelike games.

The MOBA streamer is playing "Joker".

The mobile game streamer is playing it.

An anime/manga streamer is playing it.

Even those middle-aged guys who "fought alongside me on the battlefield" somehow got wind of it and started playing "Joker Cards".

And their feedback was unanimously: Good, good, good!

There's no one who doesn't like playing.

"The Joker" won over all the players who bought the game with its most genuine fun.

This time, even the players and peers who were most opposed to Qingyan Studio and Kuangshi Games were speechless.

Faced with such a crushing defeat purely from a design perspective, any slander is simply overestimating one's own abilities.

And very quickly, within just a few days, "The Clown" also reached number one on the sales charts in foreign regions of Steam.

United States, France, Brazil...

Countries, as if driven mad, were captivated by "The Joker".

Even Zhou Kuang himself hadn't expected this.

"The Mysterious Mountains and Seas" was the first domestically produced AAA game, and its sales exploded, but it failed to create such a big splash worldwide.

Cultural barriers still exist to some extent.

However, the Joker card does not require this.

Nobody hasn't played poker.

As long as you use your brain, you can experience the fun of the game.

Even without using your brain, as long as you can understand the colors, you can still have fun.

Foreign streamers have stopped streaming their main jobs these past few days; when they do go on stream, it's always: "Chat, let's play Joker today!"

In less than a week, the sales of "The Joker" had exceeded three million copies.

This is an incredibly impressive achievement for any game.

Not to mention indie games.

If an independent game studio makes a game like "Joker," their livelihood is practically guaranteed for life.

(End of this chapter)