One of my favourite yet simplest card tricks my partner would perform for my wide-eyed amusement was to make a card vanꦰish. It was a cool bit of sleight of hand; she would take a single card and, with an artful flick of her fingers, toss it into the distance. Never once, however, would I see that card land anywhere else. Anyone older than five would know that the card never actually left her palm—I know it was in the way she would swing her wrist, direct my attention, and timed the toss—but I would keep pleading for her to repeat her performance with the petulance of a child, enchanted by this one weird trick.
Likewise, the card tricks you’ll perform in Card Shark, a game about fleecing money from filthy-rich aristocrats in 18th century France, are all about performance. In my first task, I am to peek at the cards of my soon-to-be benefactor's mark at an inn while pouring him a drink, then signal to my benefactor the poor mark’s suit by cleaning the table in a particular motion: clockwise for hearts, counter-clockwise for spades, a straight up-and-down motion for diamonds, and side-to-side for clubs. This trick isn’t the easiest to pull off; I’ll need to examine the cards while keeping the wine flowing—and without it spilling over on the table. Eventually the opponent would become suspicious of his elongated streak of losses, and drunkenly whipped out his flintlock pistol. Shots were fired, someone died, and we fled. The more we travelled together, the more I picked up on the tools of this duplicitous trade.
Card Shark is about pulling off all these delectable deceits smoothly without raising too much suspicion: take too long to pull off the trick, andꦯ your mark will get im✅patient, but do it too quickly and they’ll become suspicious. This is exemplified in another confidence trick known as the three-card monte, a real-life manoeuvre about getting your mark to bet a sum of money on uncovering a specific card out of three faced-down ones. Concealing the main card is the easy part, but keep in mind that time is of the essence; you’ll need to click on these cards, in the right order and at the right pace, in order to keep your gambit believable.
As with the other tricks, these moves are, at their core, puzzles that involve some light memorisation and quick thinking on your feet. And while you’ll get plenty of practice with your benefactor behind the scenes, the meat of Card Sharkꦅ is in pulling off these schemes with aristocrats and ridding their pockets of coin. All these tricks you’ll eventually learn will ramp up in complexity and finesse, however, which would mean that opportunities for screwing up will only get bigger—but of course, where’s the fun in safe, predictable games?
Not all games are about bagging the biggest pouch of gold though. Underpinning Card Shark is a tale about a gang of scoundrels who, surprisingly, had bigger ambitions than just petty theft, such as state secrets and blackmail material. That said, there are plenty more card tricks to be unlocked in Card Shark’s full release, which is slated for June this year. if 🌜you wish to pick up some card tricks of your own.