What is Scoundrel?

Scoundrel is a solo card game, part roguelike, part solitaire. You move through a dungeon one room at a time, fighting monsters, picking up weapons, and trying to make it out alive. The whole thing fits in a standard deck of cards, takes about ten minutes, and most attempts end badly.

How to Play Scoundrel

You start with 20 Health Points (HP) and a 44-card dungeon: a standard deck with the red face cards (Jack, Queen, King of hearts and diamonds) and the red Aces removed. Clear the whole deck without your HP hitting 0 and you win.

The Deck

• Monsters (Spades & Clubs): Their strength is their rank: 2 to 10 at face value, J = 11, Q = 12, K = 13, A = 14.
• Weapons (Diamonds): Equip one to cut down combat damage.
• Potions (Hearts): Heal you, up to your 20 HP cap.

The Room

Each turn deals four cards face-up. That's your room, and you have to deal with at least three of them. Whatever's left over carries into the next room.

Rules of Play

• Fighting bare-handed: Tap a monster to take it on with your fists. You take its full rank as damage.
• Fighting with a weapon: Equip a Diamond and you only take the difference between the monster's value and your weapon's (never less than 0). The catch: a weapon can only be used on monsters weaker than the last one it killed. Kill an 8 with it, and it's done fighting anything bigger.
• Potions: Drink a Heart to heal, up to 20 HP. Only the first potion in a room does anything; a second one is wasted.
• Fleeing: If a room looks like a death sentence, you can flee. All four cards go to the bottom of the deck, but you can't flee two rooms in a row.

Strategy Tips

• Hold onto your weapon's durability. Burning it on a weak early monster just means you're bare-handed when something nasty shows up.
• Equip something early. No weapon means full damage on every fight, so grab the first Diamond you see.
• Don't waste potions near full health. They cap at 20, so healing at 18 HP barely does anything.
• Flee only when you have to. It's a once-in-a-while option, not a strategy.
• Pay attention to what carries over. The card you leave behind is the first thing you'll see in the next room.

About Scoundrel

Scoundrel was designed by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg as a print-and-play game: rules on a page, played with cards you already own. No board, no dice.

The durability rule is what makes it click. Every kill costs your weapon a little of its edge, so you're always weighing whether to fight now or save it for something worse down the line.