Drawing Dead preview play and impressions

0:00 Hey everybody, this is Mike with the OneTop Co-op Shop and today I'm doing a preview of For Drawing Dead. This is currently on Game Found. Actually, it's about to end its campaign in a few days. I only got the prototype recently. And as always, we accept no money or compensation from publishers. We just want to help you make an informed decision and show the game off. And if you like the content on the Onetop Co-op shop, consider supporting us through Patreon. You get early access to our videos and exclusive videos every month you can't see anywhere else. You can also listen to our weekly podcast for reviews and design discussions, or join the conversation and say hi on our Discord. So, Drawing Dead is one of a line of recent solo and co-op kind of poker adjacent games, which I love. A really cool thing just to kind of explore in the solo co-op space. You're going to have a character who I think is like in the afterlife and they're trying to escape or come back to life. You know what? They did have a little story at the beginning of the rule book and I forgot to read it carefully. But, uh, you are going to pick one of four characters, at least in the prototype they sent me. Each character has their own unique set of four action cards as well as these are supposed to be double-sided like that, as well as two upgrade cards for them to level up as they go. And your character has a life value as well as a power. So, Trench has the Peacemaker power. When they're at low life, they'll get free diamond tokens to change the suits of their cards. And when you die the first time, you're not actually dead. You just flip to your infernal side, get a new power, get a new set of life, and if you die a second time, you lose. This can, by the way, be played two-player. You basically just alternate taking turns.

1:28 So, it's, you know, not too involved with a two-player mode. And if either of the players dies in the two-player mode, then you lose like dies completely. Dies twice. What you're actually trying to do to win is you need to get through three gates. Each time you add cards to a gate to fulfill its little requirements down here at the bottom, you're going to flip it over and fight a boss on the other side of the gate. And if you can defeat the boss on your third gate, then you win. But you'll also be battling random minions based on the gate's minion value. This one is one, so I flip one face up. Right now, I'm fighting the gatekeeper, and they'll be damaging you once you flip the boss. They'll be damaging you. Again, if you get killed twice, you lose. But the core mechanics of the game, we'll just go and call this the first turn. And I'll use these cards in a second, is you're going to flip six cards into what's called the river, although not quite like Texas Holdem.

2:15 And then you're going to activate the enemies and see if the cards in the river match either their strong or weak attack. And they're going to do stuff based on that. Then you get to draw three cards. And of those three cards, one is going to be added to the line to bring your options of seven cards. One is going to be used for its action in the middle of the cards, giving you a variety of abilities. And one is going to be added to the gate, or if you don't need to do that, there's another area you can add it to that uh lets you kind of mitigate your luck later to try to reach the requirements for the gate and flip the boss and get going with that. And after you assign your three cards and use their powers and things, you're going to pick one of your actions to activate. I mean, if you can activate any of them, and that'll let you deal damage or heal yourself or recycle because whichever cards you don't use in activating whatever hand you activate, go into what's called the lost pile, which are just kind of out of the game, although you can bring them back with the recycle keyword. So, the deck is going to be getting smaller and smaller.

3:07 And if you ever don't have enough cards to completely fill the river or fill your hand, then you also lose representing your soul being kind of shredded apart in the afterlife or hell or whatever we are. Uh, if I could read the story better. So, uh, let's get into it. So, we're going to activate the gatekeeper first. And she says, "If you have five radiant cards, she will make all enemies heal two hit points." Oh, sorry. I should look at her passive first. When this minion enters play, discard a card from a gate. Well, that would have been nasty if I had any cards on the gate. We got lucky here. Nothing happened. But you are trying to build up cards on the gate to fulfill its requirement and flip it to its boss side. Uh, this shows it's a level one gate. I'm doing a level one, two, and three, which is normal difficulty. But I could uh like have more level twos and level threes, tougher gates with tougher bosses to increase difficulty. So the number of the gates, the level of the gates is your main difficulty modifier.

3:56 And I have one minion and it says river passage, the fairyman. I need to have one infernal card, a club or spade, and one radiant card, a diamond or heart to be able to pass this gate and flip to the boss side. So yeah, she would have discarded one of those. Nothing happening. Now, if I had five radiant cards, all enemies would heal two hit points. Well, nobody's hurts. That wouldn't really matter. But I do not. You'll see that I have five clubs and spades and only one heart. So then her none, her minor attack is always going to happen in this case, but sometimes it will have a requirement as well. And if it's not fulfilled at all, they just won't do anything. Says deal one damage to the active character and plus one damage to that character's infernal if I flip to my other side, which luckily I have not. So I just take one damage out of my 13. And again, just to show it because uh it doesn't really fit in the camera view I'm doing, uh, Trench's ability is Peacemaker. At the start of my character phase, if I have six or fewer hit points, I gain a diamond token. And you'll see some of my actions also benefit from me being hurt. All right, so that's it for the enemy phase.

4:52 If I had had multiple enemies, like two minions or the boss was out, I would resolve their attacks in whatever order I like. But for now, I'm good. So, I'm going to draw my three cards and decide what I want to do. Let's first look at Trench's actions. So his straight focused action is reckless abandon. And the numbers here are how many cards you have in a row. Cuz a straight is like 3 4 5 4 5 6 7 8. You know, basic poker stuff. So if I have three cards in a row, I do three damage. If I have four cards in a row, I do four damage. If I have five cards in a row, an actual full straight, I do four damage to two different targets if possible. And then cards will have a power at the bottom. This one says I take one damage unless this ability defeats an enemy. So not necessarily one I want to be using this turn since I couldn't possibly do six damage to the gatekeeper. Next, my two and three of a kind focus card is frightening visage. If I have a pair, I do two damage but take one damage. If I do have two pair, I do three damage and take one damage. If I have three of a kind, I just deal three damage. And I deal plus one damage to the enemy per face card used to activate this ability.

5:48 That's pretty cool. Next, I have a flush uh for three cards of the same suit. I heal one and recycle one. Recycle one means taking cards from that loss pile and putting them into the discard. So, they'll come back into the deck and you slow down that auto loss condition. Four flush heals two recycles two. Five flles flash heals three recycles three. And then I repeat this ability once if trench has less than half hit points. I'm gonna just make a judgment call here and assume that that's before the healing. Uh if he has half hit points, not after the healing. Although I could be totally wrong on that, but we'll just see how it goes. Uh this game is still in prototype. They're still updating the cards. The version I have is not the most updated version. Okay, last my I got an awesome hand card is Sheriff's Retribution. If I get a full house, I deal two damage. If I get four of a kind, I deal five damage to every enemy.

6:36 Wow. Uh, and then I deal plus one damage for each damage on me. So, yeah, that would hurt. So, I've got an ace, two, and a six. And then I've got uh three spades, two clubs. So, I could pretty easily do the second wind. I could even add a fourth spade to heal two, although I'm only damaged one, and recycle two, which actually will make a difference because you get rid of the cards you didn't use. You send them to the lost pile before you resolve the ability. So, even though it seems like I have nothing to recycle, I could use that to recycle twice. But I also have the actions, let's not forget. So, recycle three wouldn't do anything right now. But the tamper to keyword means that I can draw two extra cards and slot them in as desired, discarding cards that are already in the river. So I could kind of change my options for my hand that way.

7:24 And then I also have this bank one card discarded this way. Banking is that alternative that I mentioned to putting a card on the gate. When you bank a card, it goes to a little side area. I'll probably just put it on my character or actually I don't know where to put it. Leave myself much room. But you can have up to three cards in your banked area. If you get a fourth, you have to discard one of them. And how they work is at any time you can discard a card from your hand and add a banked card to your hand. So it's not going to your river, but it's going straight to your hand when you're deciding how to mitigate things. All right, so the flush is not appealing to me much. So I'm going to go ahead and use my action. You can do this in any order, by the way. Adding a card to the river, adding a card to the gate or your bank area, and using the action. You can do those in whatever order you want, but you have to do each one once. So I can't like use two actions. I can't add two cards to the river. So I'm going to discard the ace to tamper two and then bank one card discarded this way. So, I draw two new cards. Oh, and I got a pair of queens.

8:13 That's interesting. This would actually be pretty good, wouldn't it? Frightening Visage. I would deal two damage plus one per face card used to activate this ability for the pair. I would still take one damage, but I deal four out of six to the gatekeeper. It seems reasonably good. And then I'm also going to bank a card that I discard right now. And I think I'm about to I guess I could add either one of these to the gate. So, I just want to make sure I bank the other color. So, if I add the radiant card, then I want to bank the uh the club or spade so that I have no chance of not having the card I need to finish off the gate next turn. Because if I do a radiant card this turn and then like let's say I draw all radiant cards next turn, I can use the banked card, sub it in for one of the cards in my hand and get the uh infernal, the spade or club.

9:01 Hopefully that makes sense. Um, yeah. So, let's go ahead and I don't know, discard these two and get my queens in there. And it doesn't matter a ton, but I'll go ahead and bank this uh 10 and discard the three. And then I will put on the gate. Since I have a radiant card, I'll put an infertile card on the gate. I'll add this six to the river for no effect. And now I'm going to activate my ability. I'm going to activate the frightening visage ability. So, you put this little penance token on whichever ability you activate. And if you move it every round to a new ability, then you're fine. But if you activate the same ability again, then you have to shred two, that means trash two cards from your decks. You're getting closer to auto losing and take one damage. So they want you to try to switch up your action each turn if possible. So I'm activating the two queens, which sadly means all five of these cards are lost. Uh we'll want to recycle them back later if we can. And I'm doing a pair with two face cards. I take one damage, but the gatekeeper takes four out of six. Now, why do we want to kill enemies? It's actually not as effective as you might think, because whenever you defeat an enemy at the end of the round, you're going to add a new enemy until you're back to your locations or your gate's current limit anyway. But you do get a reward whenever you defeat an enemy. And also, you draw the top card of the deck and get to either put it on the gate or into the bank immediately, which won't be as good here cuz I'm probably going to have the gate flipped already anyway, but can be pretty amazing later to fasttrack your gate completion. All right, the two cards that I actually activated for my frightening visage, those get discarded,

10:32 so they're still in the deck. You just reshuffle whenever you go through. And we check, is there still one minion in play? Yes, there is. Nothing else is going to happen. And we go into another round. All right, I see a straight 345 there. That's a good start. Now, are there five plus radiant cards? No. So, I'm taking one damage and I'm not infernal, so it's just one. So, I'm at 10 life out of 13. My power is definitely not active yet. Okay, I'm drawing three cards and I got a radiant to complete the gate. So, I can keep my 10 in the bank for a little while. Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's a complete straight. What does a straight get me again? Oh, a crazy powerful attack. That won't necessarily matter much cuz I don't need that much attack. I don't have a good option for a flush. I don't think I can do a full house. And sure. So, let's go ahead and play that into the river. Um, oh, let's go ahead and recycle three.

11:20 That definitely seems like the way to go here. So, when you recycle, you randomize the cards in the lost pile. And then you take that many of them and just add them to the discard pile to be shuffled back in later. Okay. And then I'll add this to the gate. I now have one radiant card and one infernal card, but we don't check that until the cleanup phase at the end of the round. Then we'll flip it and start dealing with the boss. And yeah, obviously I'm going to do a straight. Uh, that is ace 2 345. So, I get to deal four damage to two different targets. And if I don't defeat an enemy with this ability, then I would take one damage, but I'm going to. Now, I did not use the eight or the jack. Those get trashed. All right. So, I'm blasting the gatekeeper, though. So, at the end of the phase, in this case, the player phase, I'm going to get the rewards. Each character heals one hit point, and I get to recycle two radiant cards of my choice. Oh, I only have one. Well, that sucked.

12:06 Okay, then we go into the cleanup phase. Because I defeated a minion, I get to flip one card and I can either add it to the gate or to my uh banked area. Clearly banked area makes the most sense here. And then we are checking. Yes, the gate is ready. So we flip them over and we've got the fairy man. So they got six life. Uh they deal plus one damage with abilities for each minion in play. If they have two pair, they're going to deal one damage to each character. That uh matters in co-op because most enemies only deal damage to the active character, but some like this can hurt multiple people. Oh god. And they put the top card of the minion deck into play cuz you can go above the uh the normal limit for your location, which by the way remains one even though it's not printed on here. I did recommend they add this value to the boss side too. But because negate had a one minion value, this one also does. And then if they don't get anything, they deal one damage to the active character and minion activated abilities deal plus one damage this turn. Now, what's weird with that last point is Oh, by the way, I will level up and get some stuff when I defeat them. But what's weird about that last point is the rule book makes a point that you can activate the enemies in whatever order you want. So, if that's the case, why would I ever activate him first and make the minions deal plus one damage? So, that's another one else to check on. And my new enemy, because I am still at a one minion limit, is a cherub. So, he likes radiant cards, hearts or diamonds.

13:21 Oh jeez, he just trashes my cards if there are too many hearts in the river. So, hopefully not. All right, so now we just got to defeat that fairy man so we can go on to the next gate. Uh, not seeing a lot of hearts. So, suck it, Cherab. You're not getting anything. Yeah, in fact, the chair will not activate at all. He needed one heart and one diamond for his basic ability. And do we have two pair? I see two aces, but nothing else. Oh, sorry. This should have moved to No, this is where I was. Yeah. Uh, so the fairy man is going to do their basic thing. One damage to the active character, and minions deal plus one damage. Oh, but that's right. Uh, he deals plus one damage for to his abilities for each minion in play. So, actually, I took two damage from him. He's only got six life, though. We got to take this dude down quickly. All right. So, what do we got? Uh, king, two, and 10. And then looking, I got a pair of aces. Um, I've got an eight that I can pull in to make two pair. Do I have anything? Gosh darn it. I was going to say, do I have anything that would let me like this seven add or subtract to card value? Because if I had that, if I had a plus one card value, I could change that seven into an eight. You just have these little tokens to do that. And then I would have a full house and be able to do five plus four nine damage to both of them. That would kill him. Uh but crud, I didn't get it. So I guess the best I could do would be tamper four with a 10 of spades. Give myself a chance to just draw an ace or an eight legitimately instead of changing it. Or I guess I

14:52 could like theoretically get more sevens or get more queens. I mean the two pair is fine. What would I do with that? deal plus one damage per face card used to activate ability. I'm assuming they're not counting aces as face cards. No, it's not really that great. Um, okay. So, let's Even though the king is like one of the best action cards to use because it lets you do mitigation and gives you recycling. I don't really want to do I guess I could get a five flush this turn, but no, I'm not. I'm trying to kill the guy. So, yeah, I'll play this in my action to tamper four. Okay, come on. Four, three, jack nine. That doesn't sound like anything that I wanted. Oh, a three would just get me a different two pair. Yeah. So, sure. Let's get rid of the queen and put the three in there. I mean, it doesn't really matter, right? And the rest of these, I guess I'll discard. Yeah, cuz then I guess I don't have to use the eight for my bananked area, so that's that's something at least. Um, let's add the the two in here. I mean, I could do a straight again, but not a very good one. And then I'll bank the king. That is a nice ability. And then uh yes, I will say I'm activating frightening visage again. I am doing pairs of aces and threes. So these ones get lost. So I'm doing three damage plus one per face card, which is none. This is terrible.

16:05 Yeah, I'm certainly going to try to kill the fairy man cuz he's the nastiest one. But then I take one damage. So I'm at five out of 13. Great. All right, but I might, you know, if I can get a decent straight next turn or a full house, I should be able to kill that guy. I'm definitely seeing more hearts this time. So, I assume the cherub's going to do something. Do we have two pair? No, but we do have a jack, queen, king, straight and a nine. Oh, I can swap in the 10 to get a big big straight. Yes, it hit them both. I'm liking this already. But yes, uh so we don't have two pair again. I'm going to activate the cherub first. It's just dumb that I don't know. I'm I'm clearly missing something here. And maybe the fairy man's ability is active immediately, but that's not what the rules said at the moment. So, yes. Uh we don't have three hearts for automatic shredding three to the lost pile. Uh we don't have four hearts or Oh, crap. We do have four hearts or four diamonds. Oh no. Oh, four of one type. No, we've got two hearts and three diamonds. So, barely dodge that. So, he shreds the top card of the deck. And if it's a diamond or heart, it was. I take two damage. Oh, I'm about to be very close to dead. This is not good. And then this guy's hitting me for two more because it is a plus one damage from minions. Uh, wow. Wow. I need to use that second win, but I really want to defeat the boss and the cherubim. So, yes, let's draw my three cards. Come on. Give me something that like recycles or heals. Okay, that recycles three, but that heals one. I think I want that more. Loot, by the way, means you draw that many cards from the deck and then you add them to your

17:36 hand and then discard the same number of cards. So, you end up with the same number of cards in hand. Just gives you more options for like adding to stuff. Now, I could, by the way, get a great flush and it would get doubled. So, I would heal. I mean, I could Oh, no. I don't have another diamond to pull from there. Uh, but yeah. So, I can get a four flush. It would heal me four and recycle four. But, no, I got to do this straight and kill him. Um, okay. So, I'm going to take from the uh what's my call it? The bank area and get rid of I don't know this four. And then I'll add that to the uh play area to get a better straight. Then should I heal one or recycle three? Should I heal one or recycle three? Oh, I could have also changed a suit to any suit. So, I really could have gotten like a super flush there for healing. I'm gonna I'm more worried about the damage right now. I'm going to heal myself one from that. Or I could have dealt a damage to an enemy.

18:24 Oh, and I almost forgot my power because I started my character phase with six or fewer hit points. I get a diamond token, which as you can imagine, can be played at any time to change the suit of a card to a diamond, and it just sticks around until you use it. Okay. And this is going into the banked area. So, I got a lot of kings. That's cool. And then obviously I'm doing uh nine 10 jack queen wh queen kings. So y'all go away. So I'm doing four damage at two different targets and I take one damage if I don't defeat an enemy. But clearly I do because the fairy man is dead and the cherub doesn't know it yet, but he's about to be dead because otherwise minions do stick around for the next boss taking up one of the spots on the gate. So defeating the fairy man, I get to level up and then deal two damage to a minion. So leveling up gives me two options for my one and two cards. In this case, my straight and pair ones.

19:13 And I have to zoom out a little bit more. So my options are I could make reckless abandon my one with straits. Uh say that for each diamond I use in the straight I recycle one. Remember if I'm staying on my front side, I can get a lot more diamonds. Uh or I can make my pair one, frightening visage, deal plus one damage for each infernal set. So each of the pairs or three of a kind that's infernal deals plus one damage. It's pretty good. My other option is this. If the straight is infernal, I deal plus two damage, like the entire straight. [gasps] That's kind of an all or nothing thing, isn't it? I don't have as many ways to turn things to be infernal as diamonds. If at least one radiant set is formed out of the pairs in three of a kind, each character may search for the lost pile for any face card and bank it. Yeah, I'm going to go for the more consistent, if maybe slightly weaker, one and get this upgrade. Yeah, zooming out slightly so you can see it better.

20:01 But yeah, so this slots underneath the two to show that it's upgrading both of those. All right, then I can deal two damage to an minion. So boom, you're dead. And I get a heart token for their reward. So immediately get to uh pick up a card. And I can bank it. I don't want to. So we'll have a new gate and a new boss in just a moment. And this gate still only has one minion. Yay. And I need one diamond and one spade to advance, which I definitely got the spade uh in my banked area. So, we just got to find that diamond somewhere and we get our new minion. It is a quick draw guy. So, when this minion and his play, it deals one damage to each character. We'll take that in a second. Then, if he gets a pair, he's going to deal two damage to me and one to every other character, but it doesn't matter. And if he gets an infernal pair, he's going to deal two damage to everyone and then put this minion into the minion deck second from the top. As he just shoots me and runs away, healing all his damage and get a diamond token for killing him. Huh. He sounds annoying, doesn't he? All right. So, we still have enough cards before shuffling to actually deal out the river. And I see a pair, but it's not an infernal pair. So, he's going to shoot me. Oh, right. So, I took one damage from his passive, and then he's dealing two more damage. Uh, yep. So, I'm at 11 out of 13. Ouch. All right.

21:16 Now, I do have to shuffle my discard, which is still pretty big. Like, that's how many cards are in the lost area. Oh, nice. I got some diamonds. I was looking for that to make the stifle. Oh, speaking of diamonds, at the start of the character phase, since I'm hurt a lot, I get another diamond. But yes, I want to put a diamond over there because I know I can get a spade from the kings. Uh, what do I want to do, though? So, I can loot to get more options in my hand. I don't really care about that. I could change a card's value, but I really want to do that flush, right, until I've healed myself enough. Although, it is not a great turn for that. You know, diamonds is what I really want to go for. Or although I could use the heart to get three hearts here and then swap this king into my hand for my bang to get a fourth heart. I think that's the best I'm going to do. And I just won't even try to kill the quick draw guy.

22:03 Although he's doing so much damage. He is a nastier one than most. All right, so sure. I will put I don't know the jack on the gate. I will uh discard the Well, hold on. If I'm going to loot, then I guess I should actually loot, right? So yeah, hold on. Hold on. Um, I will use the eight to loot four. So again, I'm drawing four cards and then I'm discarding until I have two cards left. So I want more hearts, right? So I can add one to the thing and make my flush better. Oh no, that's right. Yeah, I just have to use my king then. So sure. Okay, so that was my action already. And then I'll add I know the six of hearts to the river and this jack of diamonds to the gate. And then again, I have a guaranteed spade for next turn. And I will go ahead and change uh this 10 into a heart. Sure. Mean I can do flush four. So these two get trashed.

22:56 Then I'm healing two and recycling two. And then because I'm at less than half hit points and doesn't have to worry about whether I'm interpreting the rule correctly because I'm so hurt. I'll get to do it again. So I'm recycling four cards total and healing four damage. Although the quick draw guy is going to shoot me in the face again in a second. All right. We'll unlock the gate again in a moment. All right. Give me diamonds. Oh, that's right. I don't want to do the flush again because then I want to take uh damage. All right, so he does he have a pair? He does have a pair. It's not an infernal pair, so he's just doing two damage to me. Then I'm getting a free diamond token. And do I get a spade or do I have to use my king? Oh, I got spades. I got spades. Now, what do I want to do this turn to hit him? If I can get a pair of face cards and get two pair, I can straight up kill him. Although I would take one damage.

23:45 That part's not great. Or if I can get three of a kind, I can kill him without getting hurt. What pair do we have? Nine. Oh, I have a nine. Okay. So, but that wouldn't be using a face card to activate it. Oh, it would be plus one for each infernal set, which I guess it wouldn't be cuz it's a club and a spade, but also a diamond. Darn it. And I don't have anything to change that. Oh, the nine would change the card to any suit. Oh, I could bring the king into my hand. Yes. Okay, I think I think this will work. So, I'm going to add the nine here. [snorts] Uh, just so I don't forget, I'm going to add the 10 over there. Uh, sorry, that'll unlock the gate in a second. Then, I'm going to discard the four to bring the uh I guess they're all the same. So, I'll bring the king of spades into my hand. I'm going to use its action. So, I'm going to recycle three. That's great. And change a suit to any suit. And I'll make this nine into another nine of spades. And then I'm doing frightening visits. So, it's three of a kind. three nines, uh, which gets me three damage. I'm not using any face cards, but frightening Visit says if it's an infernal set, which it is. It's all, uh, clubs or spades, I deal plus one damage. So, I'm oneshotting the quick draw guy, which means I gain one diamond token. And then during cleanup, I'm getting a free card to the gate or uh, over here, which clearly I'll take into my bank. I have to add a new minion, which is a ghoul.

25:07 When this minion enters play, put the top card of the minion deck into play. No. Uh, okay. That's annoying. It's wrangler. When this minion is played, discard the top card of the minion deck. That's fine. Oh, I guess cuz the reward. So, if this was the very first person, it says, "Choose a minion that discard gain its reward." So, discarding a minion ensures that even if it's the first enemy, it'll still activate correctly. Oh, and sorry, I didn't trash the many cards that I didn't use. And our second boss is Radiant Ranger. And our second boss is Aerilm, Radiant Ranger. Eight life this time. The level twos are much tougher. And then the level threes usually have three uh 10 life. So, characters take one damage if they use a club or spade in their ability. Well, hey, my diamonds can help with that. And then they get to do a lot of nasty stuff if we get diamonds. Wow, I recycle six if I defeat them, though. I'm in a bad way right now. It'd be awesome if I could get a full house of four of a kind. Not that I'm expecting that to happen. All right.

25:56 Well, here we go. This uh could be the death of me. Let's see what happens. Okay. Yeah, that full house or four of a kind is looking unlikely. Sad. Sad. But in terms of the enemy activation, uh there is not a straight for the ghoul, but there is a pair. So it's two damage to me. I think I'm going to be dead. Uh it'd be very surprising if I was not. Okay. Then radiant or infernal pair. Yes. So reveal the top card of the minion deck. Activate its strong ability, then discard it. No. Wrangler. Okay. The tycoon is dealing one damage to the active character plus one damage free damage to this minion. Okay, that could have been a lot worse. Although again, I'm at one life now, so I don't think it's going to matter. So, I assume heirlm will rock me. Uh, they do have two diamonds. Deal two damage to the active character and shred every card in the bank. What? Oh, man. All right. So, um, when do I flip to my new side? Oh, it's at the end of the current phase.

26:49 All right. So, I keep all my diamond tokens, but I am now the hot head. So, I still have 13 life to go. Line them up. At the start of your character phase, if you have six or fewer hit points, gain a plus one minus one token, which change the value of cards. Great. Uh, oh man, not feeling good about this. So, I was going to try to do a flush, but no, not anymore. All right, let's see what my options are. I got a queen. Um, plus one or minus or plus or minus one or two card value. I'm assuming an ace, like in most games, counts as a 13. Yeah, I didn't ask about this stuff, but could I do four of a kind? I think I could. Oh, I don't have any damage on me. I mean, it's still going to be good, don't get me wrong, but it's not going to like be an instant death thing. But yeah, I think this works if I put the queen out and then I do this to add plus one or sorry. Yeah. So, I'm minus2ing the ace down to king queen maybe.

27:48 I'll ask these questions and clarify on the video once I'm actually editing this. And then this one, oh, goes into my bank that they did not destroy. And then, yeah, I'm doing four of a kind. So, five damage to all enemies boosted by nothing because I'm not hurt. Gosh darn it. Uh, which I mean is still great. The ghoul dies, so I get to flip another card into my bank and I get to recycle three. Oh, and speaking of, let me ditch everything. Uh, the wrangler has one life left, but at least I'm not getting double hammered by enemies. And the boss has three life left. That's definitely doable. Oh, right. I'm supposed to get a card. There we go. Bank of four. Although, high likelihood. Uh, heirlm just throws all those cards away. All right. What have we got? Uh, do we have a pair? I don't think we do. Yes. Okay, so you do nothing. Uh, two diamonds, two hearts. We do have two diamonds. Gosh darn it. Yep. So, again, they shred all the cards. Shred. It's so much worse. Uh, deal two damage to me.

28:41 Oh, I forgot. I take one damage if I use a club or spade in my ability. Did I? Yeah, definitely. So, I guess I'm at three damage now. Oh, wait. Would that have Would that have activated before? Like, I'm not sure of the timing here. Would I have gained plus one damage from the damage she dealt to me? I'm going to assume no because I would have killed the wrangler, would have changed the turn in a drastic way and I still don't want to deal with all that. But yeah, again, you know, some things that need to be clarified in timing and abilities. I'll just ask designer all this stuff. All right, got three cards. Um, see a lot a lot of spades. I could go for the flush, although I'm not that hurt. And I just need to kill the boss. So, I won't do three damage. A three straight. I do have five, six, and three. Oh, uh, yes.

29:26 Okay, good. I was going to say I had a four in my bank, but okay, I can put a four in there and, uh, kill the boss. That seems like the way to go. And then the wrangler will be close to dead when I go to the next gate. Now, I would recycle if I use diamonds, but I really want to save those for like an automatic second wind, I think. All right, I'm going to take damage if I deal. Okay, now it doesn't say one damage per club or spade use cuz this is going to be like all clubs and spades. Although I could maybe I like do go crazy with my diamonds cuz I get to recycle a lot and not take damage from her. Yeah, you know, that seems like it might be smart. Um, all right. So, I'm going to put uh this four here. So, three, four, five, six. Oh, if I could get a two or a seven, I could get a five, a full straight and kill her.

30:17 Although, again, I don't know if I want to yet. I don't think I do because I want to be able to put her card on a new gate which won't be in play yet. See, I'm going to use this one as my action to change a card to any suit. I'll bank the ace and I'm going to make uh one of the straight cards a heart. Oh no, no, diamond. A diamond. Okay, I appear not to have any more diamonds. So, we're just going to save that to diamond. And then how much damage do I actually need to do? Uh, three. So, even a three straight would be enough, but I can just recycle more and like not trash as many cards if I do more. So, let's go a little bit ham and use all four of those as diamonds, which means these three get trashed. All right, so I get to recycle four and then um I didn't use any clubs or spades, so she doesn't get to hit me. But I hit her for four damage, which levels me up and recycles six more, which makes me feel a lot better recycling wise, but not life-wise. And I level up again. This time my two other cards. So, my option, second wind. I can deal one damage to all enemies and all characters before the rest of this ability activates. That Oh, that's on the flush one, which only heals me usually. So that's actually great. Oh, wait. And all characters. Well, I mean, I can take it if I'm healing, I guess.

31:19 And then Sheriff's retribution. If this ability defeats an enemy, that's the full house or the four of a kind. Characters take no damage during the next enemy phase. That's amazing. Okay. Or my flush uh makes me heal other characters have the Well, okay, I'm not taking this one cuz that's only for co-op, which is weird. Uh in the other characters I've played, there are like co-op specific abilities, but the ability usually has some other bonus. So, it's weird that I would literally never take this card in solo. Uh, I think they should add a little something extra or alternate there. Or I can gain four spade tokens, which is actually super cool. But nope, I'm going for the one that makes sense in solo. All right, for the gates of the triumphirate to get to the last boss, it's going to be two minions. So I got to flip another one. And uh, I got to get three face cards. Not sure if aces count as face cards. I think in a lot of things they don't. So I'm going to say they don't. Who's our new friend? An acolyte. When he dies, we shred three. Okay, I can deal with that.

32:08 Oh, where did I actually I did a straight. That's right. Oh, we got some face cards there. So, she wants a pair of which there are none. Yes. Uh, and this guy wants a straight. We got eight, nine, queen, king. No. So, he deals one damage to each character and he takes one damage. Isn't that fun? Oh, cuz look, his super one if he gets a four straight is going to deal damage equal to his remaining life. So, every turn that he does his regular activation is pretty good for us. Well, he's not very threatening. The Wrangler is not the worst, but I I'm just going to kill her because I can. Okay, good. got a jack, which will be one of the three face cards. I'm not even going to look at that. Um, I really wanted to do the flush. Uh, but I only have one club. I have two hearts, so I could get a three flush, which would deal damage to both of them, finishing off the Wrangler. So, yeah, that sounds good. So, let's use this to tamper twice. That's where we change the cards in the offer and try to get some more hearts. Nope. Uh, did I get anything else? I got a straight, didn't I? I could go six, seven, eight, nine.

33:12 Um, yeah, which would what? Do four damage to somebody. I don't I mean I I don't really care about that. What I wanted to get was hearts for having a flush. Did I get a better flush? I got spades. So, I get three spades or three hearts. It really doesn't matter. So, whatever. I'll just discard these woods. And then I will add that as planned. Oh, uh, nope. Nope. Nope. I was thinking I could like add this to my hand, but I already used everything else. And then I'm going to do the most basic flush possible. Oh, it deals one damage to me. Forget about that. Um, so I'm not gonna do that. I'm just going to heal myself one and recycle one. This seems like the worst turn ever. And I'm losing four cards. Any I'm not going to kill the Wrangler cuz honestly, I don't think it's important to do that yet. This is looking bad. I see a spare. So, it's not a radiant or infernal pair together. So, she just gets to activate the weak ability of the top guy, which is shred two, and they take one damage.

34:06 All right. So, that was not too nasty. They just shredded two cards. And really, the deck's doing okay. Like, I feel like I can kill the boss before that happens. I'm more worried about my life. Okay. And then definitely not a straight. So, this guy's taking a damage. And so am I. And we got a pair. Seems like it's probably going to be the best option. Oh, shoot. Didn't get a face card. I think I got to use the loot three then to just draw more cards and try to have another option. One, two. Come faking on. Oh, this is bad, y'all. So, I got to discard three of these. Okay, I could get two pairs, which would kill. I mean, these guys aren't that hard. And what are the chances I'm going to flip a face card for that? See, I think I'd rather do a straight. So, let's keep I got to keep two of these. 7 8 9 10. That seems like the way to go. So, I'll keep these two. Add that to the river. Add this to there. And again, I'm thinking that an ace does not count as a face card. So, I can't swap in the ace and do that. I think straight 7 8 9 10.

35:04 So, I'll do four damage to the acolyte. So, blast him out of existence. So, I get a plus one minus one token. These are going to be double-sided. Right now, they have a minus one token and a plus one token. So, I'll just remember that I can switch it. Which means I get Oh, hold on. Let's do this. So, 7 8 9 10. So, these ones are gone. Feel like I've trashed a ton of face cards. I'm just never going to be able to open this gate. Okay, I did defeat an enemy, so I don't take any extra damage. I get to flip a card. Yes. Yes. This is the bonus for killing a minion. Boom. So, next turn I might be able to unlock that. We do have to add a new guy. Osprey. When this minion is play, it deals one damage to each character below half hit points. Luckily, I am not. All right. All right. All right. Let's hope we get another face card. I'm a little bit worried that I got two face cards in the initial offer. All right. Pairs. None. Great.

35:54 Four radiant cards. Absolutely. Oh gosh. Deal two damage to the active character. Then shred three if they are above half hit points, which I am. No. Stop it, buddy. Although again, shredding is not worrying me too much. Please give me a face card. Yes. Okay, so let's not even think about it. Get out of there. So, I'll unlock the gate in a second. Although, whether I can kill anybody is uh anybody's guess. I could do second wind and heal with those uh those diamonds. I wouldn't get to do it twice cuz I'm not hurt enough. Oh, I've got to change a suit to any suit. Oh, and I got a diamond token. Yeah. So, let's do a five diamond thing. end. I guess we'll finally kill the wrangler because we can choose any minion to gain its uh discard power. Cool. So, let's uh we'll add this to here. We'll put a diamond on I don't know, the queen. We'll use the nine to put where those diamonds go. A diamond on the jack. Keep some face cards alive, I guess. So, these get trashed and I am going to hurt myself. So, I'm at seven, which means I have less than half hit points cuz I only have six hit points left. I'm going to say that I get to do it twice. I don't know. Maybe I'm cheating. So, I'm going to get the heals three or six. I mean, yeah, if this is not the way it is, then I'm cheating massively because this could keep me alive. And I'm going to recycle six.

37:06 Now, I don't may deal one damage all enemies and all characters before the rest of this ability activates. Now, do I do that twice? Well, I'm only taking the damage once. I just wanted to defeat the Wrangler. So, I'm going to get to flip a card into my bank because I don't need it on the gate anymore. And I can choose a minion to get their reward. You know, actually pick that original gatekeeper. Recycle two rating cards of my choice and heal one. That sounds nice. And we'll recycle the king. And you know, if you're a smarter player of the game, you can try to like keep specific values and cards like in your not trashed area. I'm not that smart. We're bringing out a new minion, the key maker, hanging out with the gatekeeper in Ghostbusters. I get whenever character eludes or tampers, they take one damage. Okay, but then the big thing, if we can kill this guy, we win. Abraham, death dealer. At the start of each enemy phase phase, shred three. Well, really glad I recycled a lot now.

37:52 And then he shreds cards when he activates them, too. Okay, so he's just a shredder. Cool. All right, let's see what we got. Uh, so are there three or more hearts? No. Are there two or more radiant cards? Yes. Deal one damage to the active character, and I cannot use my bank this turn. That's mildly annoying. Uh, the Osprey, are there four radiant cards? No. So, they deal one damage to me and shred one. Okay. And then, uh, we do have a pair. Do we have a straight seven, eight? No. So, he deals two damage to me. Great. And then he shreds the card used to activate it ability. Doesn't replace them. Oh god, no. That's not a nice guy. And again, if I was playing on a higher difficulty, I would have had like two minions at a level three boss potentially multiple times. Oh jeez, man. Oh, I guess I got a pair of fours and a pair of eights.

38:37 Could I have picked? Yeah. Um h I'd rather keep the eights because they at least straight with the seven. I know I saw some fours in the lost pile whereas I think I just kept an eight or saved an eight. Okay. Deal two damage to any enemy or heal any character too. I think that's just going to be a boss, you know, shot there. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. I've got a straight to hit him with. Yes, I do. Cuz look, I'm going to add that. I've got my plus or minus one. Let's make it into a plus one on that. 7 8 9 10 jacks. I'm just using every card. Um, I could bank this, too. Oh, uh, wait. I didn't No, no, yeah. Yeah. The guy said I couldn't use banked cards. He didn't say I couldn't use the pluses or minuses. So, whatever. This can go away. I'm just going to say I bank it and then discard it. But then I'll use that for its action to do two damage to him. Absolutely. And we're doing a straight. So, we are doing four damage on two different targets. And let's defeat at least one enemy. I will take a damage. So, I will hit Osprey instead of Keymaker, even though I feel like he's more annoying. So, she is defeated. I get to recycle three and heal one. That's nice. And if I had used any diamonds, I would get to recycle. I did not. And uh then I'm also doing four damage to him. He's only got four life left. How do you like that, buddy? All right. And I flip up a new guy. It's a stag. When a character changes a suit, they take one damage. These guys just don't want me to modify things. But I don't have any ways to change suits right now, so that's fine. All right.

40:03 See what we got this time. Uh three or more hearts. No. But yes, we are definitely locked out of using our banked cards again. Uh this guy. Ah, there was one or more spades. I was about to say didn't have anything. Deal one times the number of spades to the active character. Ouch. And then finally, we do have a pair. Do we have a straight five six? No. So, he's going to trash both of those. Deal two damage to me. And oh, then, sorry, I put them in the wrong pile. I'm shredding them. Now, I do get a plus or minus one token cuz I'm down to six life. Um, but otherwise, this is not looking great. I can't use my banked cards. Got to hit the guy for four. Seems unlikely. What have I got? Okay, I deal one damage to him because I only have to hit him for three. So, two pair would do that. I don't think that's possible.

40:50 Is it? I can use a plus or minus one to change the king into a queen or the queen into a king. That would get me one pair. Oh, plus one damage for each infernal set. No. Oh, wait. I think I can do it. I think I can do it. Okay, here we go. Uh, deal one damage to an enemy. Um, wait. Yes. No. No. No. Crud. CRUD. I was thinking of this wrong. Oh, no. No. I can do it. I can do it. Okay, I'm going to add this to the river. 56. Why? because then I can add or subtract one card value. Hey, that's a 62 and that's an infernal pair, baby. And then I'll use my plus or minus one to make the queen into a king. Get me two pair. And this will go to my bank. Whatever. I can't even use it. But yes, then I will do two pair. So I'm doing three damage and taking one damage. That's fine. And I deal plus one damage per face. Oh, wait. This is way better than I thought.

41:39 I was trying to set up this complicated thing to get a pair of infernal cards cuz that's plus one damage, but I forgot I'm getting plus one for each face card. So, actually, I'm doing three, four, five, six. I had to work way less hard cuz that guy is defeated, which means that we win. Yay. I was pretty dang close to death. And there's a high chance that the designer is going to come back and tell me I cheated on some of those specific plays I made and I was playing on the normal difficulty. Uh, I would have had more level two and level three gates and nastier bosses otherwise. That was Drawing Dead. What do I think of this one? I think it's a great time. I really think it's got some awesome card play with the combos of the cards in the river and the three cards in your hand. It actually reminds me a ton of the flip and right game Flip Towns where you have three cards in a poker deck and like you're using one of them to build a poker hand, one uh or a combination of suit and value to activate a location on the board. Uh just like kind of this choice of three cards that could be used in multiple ways. I think that's really neat. Gives you a lot of tactical options. And the characters are quite different in terms of what they do with those hands you build. Uh like the last character I had, where is she? She has way less life, but she has crazy healing. And in fact, she has this one power that she heals a ton.

42:51 She can hurt the people as well as healing. And then even when she dies, she uh gets to hurt everybody. And then uh when she dies the second time, she doesn't actually die. She gets like one final chance at life. So the characters are varied. I think all four of them are fun. and I've only played three of them, but they they look cool from what I've seen. The enemies are also quite varied. Although, uh, in the prototype at least, they only sent me, I think, like eight gates, but they said that's because these are ones that have final art, so I think there will be more in the final version of the game for even more bosses and even more variety there. Uh, the difficulty modifier works very smoothly. Just having tougher gates means you'll have more minions means you'll have tougher bosses. Boom, the game is easier or harder. And yeah, the game is exciting. It lets you find cool combos and cool plays to survive. Now, it's also pretty dang swingy. Let's talk about that for a second. The swingiest element is the flipping for the enemies, right? Because you get no mitigation of that. Like, if a straight comes out, if three or more hearts come out, if any of those things come out, you're getting pinged with the nasty, often like devastating ability uh of the stronger version, and you can't do anything about it. Now, there are some things that I think makes this not as bad. Let me talk about them. So, number one, since the enemies are quite varied in what they're looking for to activate their abilities, even if you get one enemy that has a super strong ability, usually, unless you're really unlucky and like multiple of them are looking for straits or whatever, usually that will kind of exclude the other enemies from getting them. Like look, the stag wants four infernal cards, but the keymaker wants three or more heart cards. There's literally no way for both of those to be

44:21 resolved. So, yes, there is a lot of swinginess in the cards being flipped, but usually you're not going to get pinged by multiple rough abilities. Um, and you know, it's exciting when you don't get hit by anything, which can happen, too. So, that still might frustrate people who don't like luck, but I don't think it's too bad. The other thing that I think balances it out some is that usually if they get a great thing, it automatically means that you will also have access to a great thing. Like, if there's a big straight in the hand or sorry, in the river, that means I can activate my straight ability, right? So, I think that it does tend to balance out some, but yes, sometimes the cards will flip in such a way like you get the wrong minion, you'll get the wrong deal and get demolished. It's a pretty quick game, but that might frustrate some people. And, you know, same thing for your things. If you don't get anything to activate if you get the wrong cards, if you just needed a face card to get the gates opening and you just can't draw one, uh, the game might last longer and you might have to destroy more things. So that's going to be uh based on your tolerance for luck.

45:19 I don't think it's too bad in the game, but it is based on poker. So clearly there's a lot of luck and some people might not like that too much. On the more strategic side, like I said, I think there are ways to try to like callull your deck so that certain things come up more often. Like you could try to call certain suits like uh use cards of some types and not use cards of others. I've never played at that level. it seems like it's a little bit too much extra thought and usually I'm just trying to make the best hand I can turn to turn. But I could see somebody playing and trying to make the deck kind of work for them and get more consistent cool cards by like keeping their face cards or keeping other things. Uh other complaints or not really complaints but critiques. Uh like I noted in the video there are some things where I think the rules could be clear but everything's still in development. So that's fair. Uh the co-op works well. You're just basically taking turns being the active character for the turn and except for bosses and things that hit both of you. you're just kind of playing that way. I think it's a smooth co-op system. You don't really do much with each other except for some abilities that can like heal other characters that a few people have. So, it's not uh it's not going to be like a heavily interactive co-op game, but it does function. It's fine, but not necessarily the best way to play. But yeah, besides that, I think this game is awesome. Really tense, really fun.

46:28 Definitely a cool new take on that whole cooperative solo poker theme that's going around. So, you got a few days left if you're watching this right when it posts. Uh, go check out the crowdfunding page. See what you think. And thanks for watching. Special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Jay William F, Pedro Lucas, Steve Ren, Miles, Casey W, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next