Buckshot Roulette Review (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

Three live rounds. Two blanks. One binding contract. A killer, a winner, and a suitcase full of cash. A strobe light, a nightclub, and a single opportunity to ring the death knell and defy the odds with a shotgun pressed firmly against your forehead. It can only be Buckshot Roulette.

You willingly sign your own death warrant at the dankest nightclub in town. Without thinking twice about the consequences, you swallow your pride and embrace the dimly lit office. A masked killer, donning a sinister smile and prickly fingers, sits adjacent, with a sequence of shells and a box of items. A ping on the defibrillator signals the first of three rounds, and you, in the hot seat, find yourself with the ability to decide when to pull the trigger and who to aim the barrel at. Four chances — no more. If you claim the life of the dealer, then you can progress to the next stage and, with any luck, leave the club with the cash and your limbs still intact. It’s a fool’s game, yet you know deep down that you have it in the bag. All you have to do is pull the trigger.

Buckshot Roulette is, in layman’s words, a great spin on a deadly game. It is, for lack of a better description, Russian Roulette, but with randomized items and a thin veil of rogue-like progression. A shotgun; a shell; and items that allow you to turn the tide against your opponent. It’s all rather simple, yet also surprisingly effective given the circumstances. It’s effective, mainly because it swaps generic luck-based gameplay for fist-in-mouth tumbleweed showdowns. A magnifying glass, for example, can provide you with a chance to peek inside the barrel before you squeeze the trigger. A cigarette can give you a quick dopamine boost, and a knife can sharpen the barrel and double the payload.

While the point of Buckshot Roulette is as simple as roulette-like games come, the game does require you to calculate each round. In the beginning, you have a quick glimpse of the shells that are in play, and then you remove several items from a box. To win, you must use the items at your disposal to ensure that you survive long enough to see the next wave. But, here’s the catch: the dealer also has access to the items on the table. It’s figuring out how to pull the wool over their eyes that’s the tough part.

There are two great things about Buckshot Roulette, the first of which is the atmosphere. Although without a plot or any major character development, the game knuckles in on the back alley club gambling scene surprisingly well, with a bass-boosted soundtrack, a dank cubicle, and a dystopian tower block that feels like an image torn straight from The Matrix. Without spoon feeding you any unnecessary clutter, it grapples you by the scruff of your neck and forces you to sign along the dotted line. The game begins, and the shells fall into place.

In addition to its no-nonsense plot thread, Buckshot Roulette has a good amount of procedurally generated assets, including items that change with each round, and stakes that you yourself can tailor to make the process a little more interesting. And then there are the little features, like the “Double or Nothing” mode, as well as the leaderboard stats. It’s all fairly compact I’ll admit, though it has enough on the table to keep your trigger finger twitching for an hour or two — and that counts for a lot here.

I won’t pretend that Buckshot Roulette is perfect, because it isn’t. In fact, during several rounds I had the pleasure of competing against an AI that, for some reason, was unimaginably incompetent. In one case, the dealer used a magnifying glass to identify a live round, and then pointed the barrel at himself to deal a fatal blow. I won that game, yet it didn’t feel as if I truly outsmarted the opponent. And sadly, that same level of lunacy cropped up on several occasions. The dealer would use all of the items on the table—to the point where it was impossible to make a wrong move—and then accidentally blow their own brains out. It never made a lot of sense, yet I’d often find myself claiming numerous hollow victories. It was rarely skill that delivered the final shot; it was poor AI.

To add to the above, I wish I could’ve had more time with the Story Mode. Given that I breezed through the whole campaign in a single twenty-minute session, I honestly didn’t see a reason to venture back to the table for a second shot at the gauntlet. Granted, Double or Nothing gave me an opportunity to boost the stakes, but with there being no additional chapters or bosses to unlock, it felt that I had seen all that there was to see in the first fifteen minutes, give or take.

Of course, while the single-player mode is tediously light and without any meat on its bones, the online multiplayer mode does have its advantages. With a four-player system that allows you to wage death-defying wars with your friends, Buckshot Roulette arguably makes for a much, much better experience as a PvP game. It’s still a niche table-based battler that has its limitations, but where it falls short on replay value, it shines bright as a thrilling, nail-biting experience that has the ammunition to get your blood pumping. And for the asking price, I’d say that’s worth forking out for.

Suffice it to say, Buckshot Roulette doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It does, however, take full advantage of the tools at its fingertips to deliver a gripping experience that can leave a solid impression. As a single-player experience, it leaves a lot to be desired. But as a PvP game, it comes through with a payload of excellent perks and leaderboard incentives. For as little as a few bucks, I’d say that makes for an absolute steal.

Verdict

Buckshot Roulette delivers a bullet-bolted, fist-in-mouth experience that has the dank atmosphere, the unpredictability, and the proper ammunition to get the blood, sweat and tears flowing. Even though it fails to conceive a proper storyline, it does bring a genuinely compelling twist to an old-school romance of bullets and brawn, with its procedural drama, tender moments, and intangible odds formulating the backbone for a surprisingly solid PvP sleeper hit.

Despite the fact that Buckshot Roulette has a couple of broken teeth, with an AI that isn’t quite as competent as most modern PvP cult hits, the game itself clearly delivers on its promise to incubate a thrill ride that you’ll never want to leave. With that in mind, I’d say that it’s a bit of a no brainer.