RogueJack: Roguelike BlackJack Hack 1.2.1 + Redeem Codes

Right away I’d like to commend the dev for resisting the temptation to shove this game full of micro transactions and ads. As far as I can tell, no micros and pretty uninvasive ads are present and it’s refreshing as a nice glass of lemonade. The ads act as a continue or special chest opening - both of which are optional.

With that done, the game is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler with the game’s driving mechanic being fighting monsters with Blackjack. The premise is simple and fun and has some nice challenge/ability variants to keep things interesting.

While it’s not the deepest game ever, it’s fun for short bursts while you’re waiting or using the bathroom or whatever. I’ll probably purchase the ad-free version soon to support the dev and their user-friendly practices

Really neat concept for a roguelike. I’ve had minimal glitches and the controls feel functional and simple. The blackjack mechanic is interesting and a neat spin on combat. The biggest issue I have is there’s not to much variety. There seems to be only 15 or so items, around the same amount of enemies, and rather than a class system or a skill tree (which would have been really neat for this game) there’s a linear xp based upgrade system. The only real form of combat manipulation is doing more damage and viewing your cards before you draw them. It’s fun for a couple hours but begins to feel tedious afterwards due to the lack of variety. I’d suggest simply adding more items and reworking status effects and making new combat effecting mechanics, as the status effects don’t feel vary powerful at all and taking more damage usually feels universally better. Runs are sort of samey at the moment, leading to limited replayability which is a huge selling point of rougelikes and would lend itself well to a game like this. Still though, fun game and good time waster.

For as much as I love the concept of this game for its creativity and strategy, the very concept of blackjack-based combat is what makes this game so frustrating to play. With each level requiring more XP, I would expect to be able to get further each time I leveled up, but this is not the case. The mage is worse than the prophet, and more XP is needed, making leveling up that much harder. Requiring all XP to be obtained in a single run, while understandable, means that you have to be the luckiest you’ve ever been in order to level up, and this can get frustrating from a gameplay perspective knowing that ultimately, no matter how you play, you are at the mercy of the cards—something especially aggravating after having the ability to see them taken away. I’d change the order of the classes.

There are other smaller issues as well:
- Keys are obtained not from a random enemy, but from the last enemy, forcing you to completely clear the floor to continue
- The shortsword (“gleeming”) and the Fuegomaker (“ememy”) both have misspellings in their descriptions
- The XP gotten from looting your grave is directly related to the amount you currently have, as far as I can tell, making the use of the altar extremely damaging to the player, as it requires them to have an even more perfect run to reach their grave normally—the only way to get significant XP from it.

It’s pretty easy to get into a no win situation especially against enemies that tie on 21 and then apply a status effect you might not have any way of clearing (and status effects continue even after you lose your first life, so it pretty much ends your run) so that can be pretty frustrating later in the game, becomes very luck based. I would recommend adding a mechanic that getting 21 at least blocks status effects. It’s very disheartening to be killed even when getting the best possible hand. Also maybe damage bonuses for using 5+ cards?

Monsters dropping poison potions when you kill them at times also leads to situations where you have to poison yourself to progress, and if there’s no cure or exit? RIP

And I just ran into a bug: was burning, got poisoned, burning stopped and then it got stuck with cards showing like I was in a battle but tapping the cards didn’t complete it, had to hard quit

As others have said, this game is a bit light on item variety. That’s not horrible but it could be better. There are also a couple annoying things about the RNG, first of which is the fact that you can often spawn with no items in sight and some monster nearby that can paste you if you don’t kill them quickly. There are also annoying cases where you manage to get a blackjack (i.e. the main goal of the game) and you lose anyways because the monster did as well and they win ties.

Customization could perhaps also be more interesting if maybe they let you choose which “character” you wanted to be instead of railroading you to the next one, which didn’t always feel like an upgrade for me.

I really enjoyed this game and paid to remove the ads. I was happy that it was a one-time purchase. The mechanics are simple so it’s easy enough to play on the go. I would love it if I could choose to change the player character I unlocked. The different play styles are fun, but it’d be nice to be able to play again as the spaceman instead of looking longingly at his gun when I find it. I also can’t read the character description again and sometimes I don’t remember what class I am. All-in-all, a great game that I definitely recommend. I look forward to updates. Thank you for making a great game!

Good afternoon all,

The game “overall” is pretty good. I enjoy the dungeon exploration and just having fun. However, I believe they need to work on the RNG (Random Number Generator) of the cards. If you have played “blackjack” in real life you know the cards are VERY random. In this game, all enemies get either a 20 or 21 except for a FEW occasions. I have also noticed that on SEVERAL battles that I will start with a total number of points of either 12, 13, or 14 and the three cards (I’m a spaceman) that I can choose from are all 10 points are higher. This happens more than it does not. If this game would FIX the RNG then is would be well worth the money spent.

I really enjoy this game, especially after the recent update to incentivize trying to hit to 21 for a critical hit.

A couple of problems keep me from giving it five stars:

- progress is not saved, even after starting a new level; I started level 21, set my phone aside for a while, did a couple of things in other apps, and when I launched the app, I was back at level one, having lost all of my equipment (I was able to jump back to level 21, but I lost experience points in the process, too)

- when I made it down and back up through the dungeon, I was able to restart with all of my equipment, but despite having a +2 weapon, it only did +1 damage

- a couple of times I was unable to tap any of my cards—though the menus all worked—so I had to restart the app; lost all of my progress again, so I’m not sure what happens when the save icon appears when starting a new level

A lot of the mechanics seem pointless, and the basic design of the game seems flawed. You only have three hit points, and whether or not you win or lose is 100% luck. Also for the most the part, I approached fighting every enemy the exact same. I also don’t understand what the movement is supposed to add to the game, because enemies don’t attack you and that means there is an optimal way to approach each floor. I also don’t understand why you would ever start back from the first floor and not just skip to the floor you died on. My main problem is the lack of strategy and choice, which makes the game feel simply dull. The reason BlackJack is interesting is the betting, but without that the game simply feels lifeless.

This is pretty much exactly what it looks like. Unfortunately, it feels like there is very little player choice involved. This game sorely lacks a clear explanation of the deck mechanic. I’m not sure if the deck is a full deck of 52 cards, or more decks, or fewer cards, or if the monsters and I share a deck. There’s a deck icon/stat for each monster, but it’s never explained. This makes it basically impossible to strategize outside of very basic high/low odds.

The character progression is also on rails, each level giving a new perk such as increased hand size or increased odds of being dealt a face-up card, but I was hoping for some light RPG mechanics or deeper meta progression. Props to the devs for the very fair monetization, game just misses the mark for me.