There are so many things in reality that I find pretty boring, but if you put them in a game, suddenly, they become utterly compelling.
Tidying up the house in real life? Gods no. Tidying up a virtual house in House Flipper 2? Yes, please, I’ll even do the painting and decorating. Card games? I’d rather read a book on the art of drying paint cover to cover. Then I’d take a test on my knowledge of paint-drying art, a 20,000-word essay on how just watching the slight change in color as it dries captures the essence of the human condition. After that, I guess I’d just have to politely decline any offers of a game of poker, Uno, or Snap. Yet, put them in a game, and bam, now I’m gonna make it my gaming life. I estimate that around 30% of my time in Red Dead Redemption was spent relaxing and playing cards.
In fact, put card game mechanics in any game, and my interest levels will rise. See everything from Midnight Suns to Inscryption. I still haven’t played Balatro because I fear it will become a timesink I will struggle to escape from. I just spent most of my run on Hitman’s Bond crossover playing the tables before fumbling the target and causing plenty of bloodshed on my way out.
Anyway, that’s why Rideon’s Brave x Junction caught my eye. It’s a turn-based fantasy RPG where you go traversing through the usual sort of dungeons, facing up to monsters. It’s a ”You’ve seen one, you’ve seen a million” kind of thing on the surface, but the actual battling is about playing cards, blackjack specifically
Yes, in Brave x Junction, you and your opponent dole out damage in a card game. This isn’t exactly a new idea, but using blackjack as a means to do so is an interesting approach. Going back to the roots of the RPG, a dice roll picks the number to determine the outcome, and by using blackjack, Brave x Junction is putting a spin on that.
Brave x Junction Demo: Aces or a Bust?
If you’ve never played blackjack, the idea is to draw cards until you reach or get as close as possible to a total score of 21. If you draw a collective number higher than 21, you ‘bust.’ If not, you just have to get a higher number than your opponent. It’s simple stuff, but laced with a bit of exciting risk when you have, say, 13 or 14 and have to decide if picking one more card will give you the magic number or clean you out, so to speak. In Brave x Junction, winning this card game deals damage, with the outcome determining the amount of damage caused.
In the background, Brave x Junction is still engaging in all the usual RPG activities: finding weapons, rewards, character interactions, and the like. However, the game leverages the absurdity of a card game as the driving factor in the battle. Three character classes affect exactly how you play your cards, too. The Fighter plays aggressively, The Thief anticipates potential danger, and The Magician employs trickery to manipulate the battle.
This adds strategic variety to the game, complementing the uncertainty introduced by blackjack’s inherent risk. There was a danger the use of blackjack would be little more than a shallow gimmick to stand out and be noticed (which, fair play, I would have to say, worked on me). However, it’s already clear that it’s an integral part of Brave x Junction, and the developer is in good humor about how nonsensical that concept is.
It’s only a taste for now, and there’s no release date for the whole game right now, but I’m eagerly awaiting my next blackjack battle against a slime.
Brave x Junction has a demo available on Steam now.
