After quietly roiling away on Itch.io for a few months, bite-sized strategy gambling game Buckshot Roulette has come to Steam and instantly become one of the most popular and highest-rated PC games of the year. It only costs $3 ($2.69 thanks to an ongoing sale), you can finish it in well under an hour, and there's a very good reason that it's gotten over 6,600 user reviews with a 96% positive score since its April 4 Steam launch.
Created by Mike Klubnika and based on Russian Roulette, Buckshot Roulette is quite literally a game about shooting yourself in the face with a shotgun – or rather, trying not to do that, and instead having your opponent swallow the live shells while you skirt death with harmless blank shells.
In a seedy underground club, you sit down at a table – after signing a waiver, obviously – with a monstrous dealer, a shotgun, and a random assortment of tools that manipulate the shotgun. You and the dealer take turns staring down the barrel and pulling the trigger, betting on careful item usage and some help from Lady Luck to help you dodge the titular buckshot.
- Balatro creator was "shocked" at his poker roguelike's high review scores: "I don’t think I would have rated Balatro higher than an 8 and I made the damn thing"
- Balatro's first few hours generated over $600,000, "far more money" than the roguelike's creator had ever made: "It is the most surreal day of my life"
See, you and the dealer each have a set health pool, and each live round of buckshot you take understandably knocks off one point. The first to hit zero health loses. It's the items that make this more than a game of pure chance. You can burn a magnifying glass to sneak a peek at the next shell in the chamber, saw off the barrel for double damage on the next shot, inhale a cigarette to inexplicably regain a point of health, straight-up remove a shell from the chamber, and more. Small interactions in a simple game loop quickly pile up to become an engrossing, atmospheric, almost tabletop experience that never fails to quicken my pulse.
Buckshot Roulette is a certified viral hit, and many fans are saying the same thing: this is crying out for PvP. For once, I actually agree with the "add PvP" crowd, and Klubnika has clearly heard this feedback. In a Steam post outlining the added features in the new version, like leaderboards and beta Steam Deck support, the dev teases:
"Oh, and one more thing. To all of you, who dream about a multiplayer mode — we hear you, and are working hard on making this dream a reality. We’re not ready to share any details at this time, but we’d love to at least give you some reassurance in this chaotic world."
This is already a great game for platforms like Twitch, which is partly what's skyrocketed its popularity. If Buckshot Roulette really does get multiplayer in the not-too-distant future, I could definitely see it catching a second wave of fame and hooking yet more players.
It's another exciting, unexpected release in what's already a banner year for surprising PC games. Balatro, another surprise success of 2024 from a solo developer, and with yet another gambling twist, sold over 500,000 copies in just 10 days. And just this month, off-beat social extraction game Content Warning managed over 6.2 million owners in one day.
Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 is still suffering from its own success, with the dev advising folks to let the game "rest" while they fix frequent crashes as over 230,000 divers fought to crush the Automatons.
