card shark
a playing card is a wonderful little object. it has just the right shape, the right feel, the right heft of being. it's a nice thing to have in your hand - or better yet, to have several, to feel them collapse and riffle back and forth and you move them around. because what makes a playing card really special is that each one is a secret, known only to you, for a short little while. are you losing? is your hand absolute trash? maybe, but only YOU know you're losing, for now.
card shark tugs at both of these aspects of playing cards in incredible ways. it does a truly astonishing job of giving you the cardfeel of shuffling a deck, cutting a stack, dealing a card, examining a hand, all with controller mechanics and haptics. but it also tells you how to steal the cards' secrets for yourself - and then how to make the cards dance through the deck, across the table, and into the right player's hands to make sure you walk away with more money than you started with.
card shark has a bevy of interesting card tricks to heap on you, and it does so routinely, in interesting fashion, against a beautifully rendered world - a world full with opulent aristocrats and ingenious beggars. it's kind, funny, and well-told.
perhaps the biggest compliment I can give card shark is that, on finishing it, I immediately started trying to learn card tricks with a deck of cards. the second biggest compliment I can give it is that I bought a copy for a non-gamer friend in my life to get them to play it.