Are You Ready?
"At the top of a night-club, smoke fills the room... as blue and red shells skip across the bloody floor."
— Store description.
Buckshot Roulette is a short, self-described tabletop horror game developed by Mike Klubnika and uploaded to itch.io on December 29th, 2023. You can buy the game here
for 1.20 USD. A Steam version of the game was released on April 4, 2024 for 3.24 USD, featuring new items, achievements and an online leaderboard, as well as an announcement that a multiplayer update is in development. You can get that version here.
The concept for the game is fairly simple: You are a Faceless Protagonist who enters a dirty, but active underground night club to play a game of Russian Roulette with a crooked dealer who just so happens to be a demonic entity. The twist? Instead of a revolver, you play with a shotgun and take turns either shooting yourselves or each other to win.
Things get more interesting in the second round, as the dealer will add items to the game that you can use to give yourself an edge over your opponent, who will do the same to you. A new game mode called "Double or Nothing" was added in a small update on January 13th, 2024. It can be accessed by consuming the sleeping pills in the restroom, which immediately allows you to get right into the game (skipping the intro dialogue and tutorial). The game mode randomizes the shell, item, and health counts for each round, and there's only three rounds till you can cash out but you have the option of risking it all by going double or nothing.
This game shows examples of
- Absurd Cutting Power: The Dealer with inhuman strength slices through the gun with a hacksaw, like it’s an absurdly sharp knife cutting through cake. It takes you a little more effort to cut through and turn the weapon into a Sawn-Off Shotgun.
- Achievement Mockery: Some of the Steam Achievements require the player to either make a stupid play or just get unlucky.
- "Why?" is achieved by the player using a magnifying glass to find a live round in the chamber and then shoot themself with it.
- "Going Out With Style!" unlocks when the player uses the handsaw and then shoots themself with a live round with at least two health left.
- "Know When to Quit" pops up if the player loses over a million dollars in Double or Nothing.
- Affably Evil: The demonic entity playing against you is nothing but polite, even as you repeatedly shoot it in the face. All it wants is to play a fair game with you that just so happens to be deadly. The dealer is even nice enough to handcuff itself if you choose to use the handcuffs on it.
- All or Nothing: The aptly named "Double or Nothing" mode, where the player doubles their cash if they win but loses all of it if they lose.
- Allegorical Character: A common interpretation for The Dealer is that he's an allegory for addiction, as he runs the game where the player is enticed with money and must risk their own lives against it. The player will keep coming back, but they're playing with their own life every time, and sooner or later, they're going to lose.
- All Just a Dream: Seems to be the justification for Double or Nothing; you enter this game mode by taking a bottle of sleeping pills, and if you die in that mode you simply reappear in the bathroom no worse for wear (as opposed to the normal gameplay where you're revived by a doctor).
- Ambiguous Situation: During round 2, the Dealer may accidentally give you a release form signed by "GOD." This suggests two possibilities, either that the Dealer challenged God and won, or that the Dealer is God.
- In the Steam release, attempting to enter God as your name on the waiver unlocks an achievement which includes the phrase "Deicide" in it's description, implying it's the former.
- Artificial Brilliance:
- The Dealer can be very apt with using its items to its advantage. It can and will combo them together to ruin you if you let it, such as a combo of putting handcuffs on you, using a magnifying glass to see what shell is in the shotgun, sawing off the shotgun and if luck is on its side, this all leads to you getting screwed over.
- If it's the Dealer's turn and there's only one round left in the chamber, the Dealer will always know if it's live or blank and act accordingly.
- Artificial Stupidity: The Dealer does not keep track of the rounds that have been fired (it always knows the last round in the gun, but then again, so would a player who's been counting shells). This can lead to baffling moments such as wasting multiple items on a shotgun with only blanks remaining or shooting itself even with high odds of getting a live round, or even worse, while there are only live shells left. If it doesn't have a magnifying glass and the gun has multiple rounds left, the Dealer effectively operates on an A.I. Roulette and has equal odds of either screwing you over or wasting items and blowing its own face off.
- The Steam release noticably improved the AI for Double or Nothing mode, making the Dealer a lot less prone to dumb mistakes. It can still be overzealous when using items, though, for example using handcuffs on the player when it knows only blanks are left in the gun or using beer to cycle a round that it knows is a blank.
- Artistic License – Biology: Obviously, being shot in the face with a shotgun at point-blank (or two meter) range would result in your head splitting into pieces. No defibrillator or blood transfusion could save you from that, yet you can still play thanks to them. Somewhat justified in that the Dealer is indicated to have supernatural abilities.
- Arrange Mode: Consuming the pills in the restroom activates the "Double or Nothing" mode which lets you play the game endlessly, where every three rounds you survived, you are prompted with the choice to double the money you earned if you continue or stop playing. The mode gets straight into the action by skipping the intro and tutorial alongside adding far more luck by completely randomizing the shells, items, and health counts every round.
- Bittersweet Ending: Downplayed. If you win the game and get the tens of thousands of dollars, the player drives off into the night with the money and the shotgun. Despite all the prizes, the music sounds slightly melancholic, as if the character is reflecting on whether it was worth it or not.
- Booze-Based Buff: Using a beer can from the second round onward allows you to rack the shotgun without firing it, regardless of whether there is a live shell or a dummy shell loaded in the chamber.
- Briefcase Full of Money: Your reward for winning the final round. The exact amount you get varies depending on how many times you failed a round and how many times you used the beer and cigarette items, with a maximum score of 70,000 dollars. You also get to keep the shotgun.
- But Thou Must!: You cannot play the Dealer's Russian Roulette game for money until you sign the liability waiver first. You don't have the option to back out.
- Camera Abuse: The Dealer's blood splatters on the player's screen if they reduce his charge meter to zero.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: One of the items from the second round onwards is a pack of cigarettes. You can use it to "take the edge off" and regain one health point. You can still smoke if your defibrillator is cut off in the final round, though it no longer serves a practical purpose.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Live rounds are red, while blanks are blue-grey. Version 1.2.1 adds a colorblind mode that uses white live shells and black blanks.
- Controllable Helplessness: Once you pick up the shotgun, you cannot put it back down until it is fired, either at yourself or the Dealer. Being hasty in a round can put you in a tough spot if not careful, or if you forget to use an item.
- Counting Bullets: The Game. You're briefly shown how many rounds will be shuffled then loaded into the shotgun before each session, after which you're on your own to keep track. With all the items at your disposal to figure out which rounds are live, keeping track of how many rounds are still in the gun is essential in tipping the odds in your favor.
- Deadly Game: It is Russian roulette after all, where there's the possibility of a player shooting their head off and dying as a result, but it is possible that your character could simply decide to leave upon being resuscitated after losing the first two rounds. All bets are off on the final round though, which can only end with one of you dying.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Getting a face full of buckshot only makes you lose one or two points of charge depending if the shotgun is sawn off or not, then you get immediately revived. Even if you lose a round, you're revived anyway and you can just play another round. Except on the final round: if your charge meter drops too low, your defibrillator will have its power cut, meaning that if you get shot again, you will die. Double subverted as even then, the game still allows you to come back for more and replay the final round, though the Dealer won't be happy to see you.
- Developer's Foresight:
- When signing the "General Release of Liability" document at the start, you cannot input "DEALER", since it would cause confusion with the actual Dealer. You also cannot input "GOD" because of the waiver you find in the second round; attempting to do so in the Steam version gives you an achievement.
- The Steam release added a phone item that will tell you whether one specific shell in the shotgun is live or blank, but never the one that's currently loaded, since that's the point of the magnifying glass. If you use the phone on the very last shell, the phone will simply tell you "How unfortunate..." and hang up, effectively wasting the item.
- Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: The Dealer apparently got God Almighty to play its little game, and won.
- Diegetic Switch: When you walk from the starting bathroom into the upper hall of the night club, you can see the lights and music pulsing in the active pit below. After entering the game room, the now muffled music can still be heard beyond the walls, now serving as the background music for your little game.
- Endless Game: Double or Nothing mode. By swallowing the pills in the restroom, you can have a less story-focused game and now go for a high score to see how much money you can risk and win from the dealer, before cashing out... but if you lose a single round, you walk away with nothing.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": If the Dealer has an actual name, it's never mentioned.
- Extra Turn: There are three ways of getting another turn: shooting yourself with a blank, using the handcuffs (which will force your opponent to skip their turn), or firing off the last shell in the shotgun, making the Dealer reload the shotgun (it will always allow you to get the first shot after that).
- Eye Awaken: Subverted. After the Dealer's final life is taken, it appears as if he finally gains a pair of red glowing eyes as he stands in the darkness... but it's actually an automated delivery system for the money you were playing for, set to go off upon his death.
- Eyeless Face: The Dealer seems to have no eyes in its sockets.
- Face Framed in Shadow: The only things we see of the Dealer besides its hands is its face peering out of the darkness.
- The Faceless: The doctor's face is always obscured in darkness.
- Face of a Thug: Despite how horrifying the Dealer looks, it is nothing but polite and honorable during its game of chance with you to the very end, following the rules in the same exact fashion you are and never stooping to any dirty tactics, cheap scares, or even any unsportsmanlike behavior. You're not even forced into its Deadly Game, as the decision to play is entirely the player character's choice.
- Fair-Play Villain: The Dealer enjoys playing a game that ends with the participants killing each other, but it is entirely up-front and honest with the terms and rules. It personally follows the rules it has established, and both parties have an equal chance of winning.
- Featureless Protagonist: We know absolutely nothing about the person we are playing as, since they are simply supposed to be a stand-in for the player.
- Floating Limbs: We don't see much of the Dealer due to the lighting, but its hands are separate from its body and can reach all the way across the table at will without showing any arms.
- God Is Dead: During the second time you take out your items in the second round, you accidentally pull out a bloody release of liability signed with the name "GOD", suggesting that God Himself decided to play the game with the demon and lost.note
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The Dealer and you will sometimes be given a box of cigarettes at random. Smoking one takes the edge off the pain of being shot, allowing you to recover one health point.
- Graceful Loser: The Dealer honors the result of the game should it be killed, with their last act being to reward the player with their winnings and letting them keep the shotgun as a memento. When the Dealer is about to lose, all it asks is, "Are you ready?"
- Guide Dang It!: The Steam version's initial build introduces the adrenaline item, which lets you steal an item from your opponent. While the game makes a point that the stolen item is then used immediately, it fails to tell you once you use the adrenaline, you have a limited time—a few seconds—to choose your item before it wears off and you automatically return to your seat, so you'd best select your target from across the table before you shoot up.
- Guns Do Not Work That Way:
- Although the game's depiction of the pump-action shotgun is mostly accurate, if the Dealer shoots himself the shotgun will eject a shell on its own as if it were semi-auto, presumably because there isn't any space where it would make sense to include an animation of the dealer cycling the gun after they've just been shot.
- The hacksaw cuts off part of the magazine tube as well as the barrel, yet the shotgun still functions as normal. Cutting the barrel of a shotgun down will make it less effective the shorter you go, but at least it'll still be functional. Cutting off part of the magazine tube, on the other hand, will just give you a glorified single-shot weapon, since it won't be able to feed shells into the action anymore. Then again, the shotgun also magically regenerates after being sawn off.
- The "blanks" would more accurately be described as dummy rounds. Actual blank rounds still contain propellant, and while they are less-than-lethal in intent, the kinetic force they pack is significant; a blank fired at close range like in the game would blow your face off quite readily.
- The shotgun is modeled with an ejection port on both sides. While there are guns in real-life that can have their operating systems changed to accommodate left-handed users, since the shells are always ejected on the right side, the left side is redundant.
- Healing Loop: A combination of horrible item luck and poor memory can see you and the Dealer getting caught in one with the cigarettes which recover health. Turns can be wasted if you keep racking the shotgun with beers.
- Heroic Mime: The player character.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Three of the Steam Achievements allude to this trope. All of which can only be achieved in Double or Nothing.
- "Nope!" is for immediately cashing out after the first game.
- "1000K" is for cashing out after scoring over a million dollars.
- Almost mentioned by name with "Know When To Quit", which is for scoring over a million dollars and losing.
- Liquid Courage: Cans of beer will rack the shotgun as you duel with the Dealer on the edge of life and death, allowing you another turn while discarding a live or blank bullet. There's no penalty. It shouldn't be written off as a useless item. Sometimes on a round, the odds are stacked against you. The Dealer could get loads of handcuffs and hacksaws, meaning as soon as it's his turn, you're boned. If you're keeping track of the probability, you can get rid of blanks, and get RNG back in your favor.
- Magical Defibrillator: Considering you are playing with a demon, it may well be magic that it can somehow revive you from being shot in the face with a shotgun. Your respective power lines get cut if you take too much damage in the final round, to emphasize that the next shot will be fatal.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Dealer's mouth is lined with thin, razor-sharp teeth.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: An instance that actually supports the player. In the third round, the Doctor won't revive you as the power to your defibrillator is cut. If you get shot when the power is cut, you go to Heaven. After a few moments looking at the warped landscape, the game offers you to retry, allowing you to go up against the Dealer for another shot, and you can do this as many times as you want. This actually pisses the otherwise unflappable Dealer off, since you broke the rules by coming back. Meanwhile it still follows the established rules and accepts its impending death if it loses.
- Nightmare Face: Not that the Dealer's face is all that pleasant to begin with, but after the first time it's shot, its face becomes warped and mangled-looking for the rest of the game. It returns back to normal if you lose and come back to play again, suggesting it has a Healing Factor.
- Noble Demon: The demonic Dealer is nice enough that it will have its assistant on the outside defibrillate you back to life if you lose in the first two rounds, then simply welcomes you back to the table for another round. There's nothing that suggests you are forced to participate either, as you have to willingly sign a release of liability to play in the first place. It's also notable that at no point does the Dealer attempt to misdirect, lie, cheat, or otherwise manipulate the game or you to win, like you'd expect most demons to.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: You're not the first person the Dealer has roped into his game, as you discover a bloody waiver in the second round, apparently signed by God Himself. And the Dealer won. Notably, if you die in the final round, your afterlife is a barren wasteland beyond The Pearly Gates, implying God is, indeed, dead.
- Ominous Message from the Future: The April 2024 update adds Burner Phone as a new item. Calling it will tell you which future shell in the shotgun is a live or blank round. This can be a Useless Item if it's not your turn at that point in time, but can greatly aid in process of elimination if there are only a few rounds in the gun.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The only time the Dealer's polite demeanor drops is when the player returns to the table after dying in the final round. The Dealer doesn't welcome you back to the table like he usually would, instead giving a Death Glare, as if wondering how the hell you're still alive, and while he allows you to replay the final round, he utters an ominous, "I better not see you again."
- "Open!" Says Me: The player character seems to refuse opening doors the normal way, instead kicking both doors on the way to the playing table open every time. The ending screen even counts the number of times they did this.
- The Pearly Gates: A particularly unfriendly-looking version. If you die in the final round, neither the dealer nor the doctor will revive you again (due to the power lines to your defibrillator being cut) and you will wake up in front of the gates of what appears to be a foggy forest made out of giant spikes. According to the game files, it's Heaven, though the unfriendliness could be because God Is Dead. The Steam Achievements call these the "Bronze Gates".
- Percussive Maintenance: The Dealer will repeatedly punch the inverter when it uses it, which makes it work somehow.
- Pre Mortem Oneliner / Facing The Bullets Oneliner: The Dealer will always say the same line right before either his or your powerlines get cut, meaning that depending on the turn order, he might be saying this to you right before he shoots you, or saying this right before you shoot him.“Are You Ready?”
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The dealer is suggested to be a demon, but aside from running a completely consensual Deadly Game, it doesn't do anything one would expect of a Hellish emissary onscreen. It doesn't even take the player's soul if they die, since their afterlife is a very abstract Heaven. It did apparently challenge God to its game and win, though - then again, perhaps the dealer is God.
- Player-Exclusive Mechanic: Since the player always gets the first turn when the shotgun is reloaded, they can employ some strategies that the Dealer cannot use. For example, they can use one pair of handcuffs before the reload and another after the reload, in order to make the Dealer skip four turns in a row. Alternatively, they can use beers to skip to the last shell and then fire it at the Dealer: either it's a live round and they score a hit, or it's a blank and they get to try again after the reload.
- Point of No Continues: If either player's number of charges gets to two or lower in the final round, the power lines connecting them to the Magical Defibrillator are cut, meaning that receiving another shot will kill them. Subverted as the player can replay the final round after dying, without losing their previous progress.
- Quaking with Fear: Picking up the shotgun noticably has it shaking somewhat, especially if you decide to test your luck with shooting yourself. It stops shaking if you aim at the Dealer though, probably because you don't have much to worry about getting hurt while doing so.
- Rule of Funny: The magnifying glass item allows you to check what round is currently in the shotgun's chamber. When you use the glass, you smash it on the table, then you just grab the shotgun and check it. When the dealer uses the glass, they smash it... and then look through the remains to check the shotgun from a distance, somehow achieving the same effect.
- Rule of Three: The player must win three rounds in order to beat the game, or in Double or Nothing mode, potentially double their money.
- Russian Roulette: The entire premise of the game, though here it is played with a shotgun instead of the traditional revolver. There are several differences compared to the normal rules:
- Thanks to a Magical Defibrillator, players can survive lethal shots as long as they have at least one charge left.
- The amount and type of shells varies randomly every time the shotgun is reloaded. The dealer will always give you the first turn after each reload.
- During their turn, players can either shoot themselves or their opponent. Shooting yourself with a blank allows you to continue your turn for another shot - this can be repeated indefinitely.
- Starting from the second match onwards, both players get special items every time the shotgun is reloaded.
- Sawn-Off Shotgun: The handsaw item allows both players to saw a couple of inches off the barrel of the shotgun to deal two damage instead of just one (assuming, of course, that there is a live shell in the chamber). The barrel is magically restored after their turn.
- Shot to the Heart: The Adrenaline item has the player using it to inject themselves in the chest, giving them a few seconds to swipe one of the Dealer's items and then use it immediately (except another Adrenaline). The Dealer, on the other hand, doesn't bother injecting itself and just throws it aside before snatching your item.
- Shows Damage: In an unconventional way; The Dealer's face becomes distorted after the player shoots him for the first time. He never gets any actual bullet wounds, though.
- Slasher Smile: The Dealer has a big, tooth-filled smile prior to being shot. It loses this afterwards, either because of the pain or because its mouth is simply too damaged to make one.
- Smash to Black: Every time you get shot, the screen abruptly cuts to black and goes dead silent just after the shotgun flashes. You are then brought back to life with a defibrillator or wake up at the gates to the afterlife.
- Uncertain Doom: The Dealer stays down after you win the final round, having cut off its own life support to raise the stakes. Your prize money is given to you by a machine, but the fact that two ominous red lights briefly glow in the darkness before the suitcase appears suggests that it is still alive.
- Useless Item: After the player or the Dealer's life support is cut in round 3, they can still be given cigarettes, but using them no longer serves a practical purpose as the next shot will be fatal regardless. Likewise, the other player can still be given handsaws, even though actually using one is meaningless.
- Voice Grunting: The game isn't voice-acted, so the Dealer and its assistant talk this way.
- Way Past the Expiration Date: The April 2024 update adds Expired Medicine to the possible drop items you can get at the start of every round. There's a 50% chance consuming it will help you recover 2 health points, if not, you lose 1 health point.
- Wham Shot: Opening the item box to find a "Release of Liability" document similar to the one you signed at the start of the game. Except that this one is bloodied and signed "GOD".
"They enter the chamber in a hidden sequence... which one is where? Your guess is as good as mine."
