The House Always Wins Preview – Unless You Play This Rogue-Like for Free

It’s hardly a gamble to try The House Always Wins demo for free. First, it’s free. Second, I’d wager that if you like deck-building games, you will like it as much as I did, especially with the casino-themed spin. It works!

PiGames rogue-like has been in my library for a couple of months now, so pleased to see that the demo is still available and not been revoked like some parties do. It’s not going to take you long to read this, so I suggest you download it. Only after reading this, seeing as I’ve made the effort to get dressed up and present this to you.

You play… you. It doesn’t matter. The goal is a straightforward one: you need to beat the house to win the game. Naturally, as a rogue-like/card ensemble, you aren’t going to do this the first time you play The House Always Wins, as you’ll need to level up, accumulate a wide range of cards, but also: it’s a demo!

Cards, Dice And Relics

It follows the same principles as any other game from the pool in that you have attack cards, defence, support and specials. How the game differs is the framing and terminology. The tutorial claims to be simple enough, but as soon as relics and exacties are thrown about, I wonder if I’m going to be able to follow it. I did, and I could. It’s very intuitive.

Obviously, you have action points to play per round, as do your opponents. The aim is to get their health to zero to move to the next stage, and to do that you use attack cards infused with elemental damage, and block incoming damage with bluffs. What makes The House Always Wins different is the use of a die.

I personally hate die-based games as I don’t get it, but here you can roll every turn, and when you drag a card onto the die, it’ll get modified, a.k.a. empowered. This means attacks/defence increase, and it’s a really good mechanic without being overpowered. Additionally, the specials in the game are relics.

Relics are passive and will be triggered when you do a certain action, but the best one is the exactie. If you manage to do damage equal to their remaining HP, e.g. they have 5 HP, and you play an attack card of the same damage, you get health restored. No doubt, in the full game, these relics will swap out, but this one is helpful.

From Elevators To Elites

Maintaining the casino theme, the stages are selected through an elevator, offering standard battles, shops to buy new cards, events that typically reward you with a relic or money to spend in the shop, and elite battles. Naturally, battles go from 1-on-1 to 3-on-1 and enemies you face early on reappear with added buffs and supporters.

It was certainly worth keeping The House Always Wins sitting in my library to come back to. The developer had originally reached out, and under no obligation, I didn’t have a deadline, hence it being a couple of months when I was actually free! I could have put it to one side but was eager to try and glad I did.

I appreciate that the deck-building genre is huge and there are so many gimmicks out there. The casino theme, something I’m not remotely interested in, worked wonders here and overall, this has been a standout. Wishlist it, play it, then tell the house who really owns the table.