Evoking the sinister vibes of Inscryption and the Resident Evil 7 DLC that sees you playing a deadly game of Blackjack at the whim of creepy antagonist Lucas Baker, Buckshot Roulette is a life-or-death indie horror game that just arrived on Steam following a hugely positive response to its initial release via Itch.io in December 2023. Available for less than $3, it’s already reaching a peak Steam player count of over 8,000 concurrent players and has an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ 96% review score across nearly 4,000 user reviews.
In Buckshot Roulette, you and a mysterious figure called “The Dealer” play three rounds of Russian roulette using a 12-gauge shotgun. Win and you’ll walk away with a big prize; lose and, well, you can probably already imagine. The resulting experience is a thrilling psychological horror game that makes a strong first impression with its grimy, industrial vibes as you explore the facility and sit down opposite your creepy opponent, but also boasts plenty of replay value.
Each round, the Dealer loads a mixture of live shells and blanks into the weapon, and you must choose whether to aim at yourself or the Dealer. To help you strategize, a series of items allows you to manipulate the game with tricks such as revealing the nature of the next shell, ejecting the current shell without consequence, or handcuffing your opponent to skip their next turn. Update 1.2, which arrives alongside the game’s Steam launch, introduces four new items that only appear in the game’s endless mode, Double or Nothing.
A multiplayer mode is also set to arrive in Buckshot Roulette at some point in the near future; its developer Mike Klubnika “cannot share any specific details right now, but rest assured there’s enough shells for everyone.” If you already own the game via Itch.io, the 1.2 update will be arriving on Thursday, April 18. Klubnika says he wants to “make sure that all the early Itch.io supporters get a fun and bug-free experience.”
When that update arrives, the game’s price on Itch.io will rise from its $1.20 tag to match the Steam pricing. Klubnika also notes that “because there will be certain features in future updates that rely on Steam tools, there are going to be differences between the versions.” Initially, these will just be limited to online leaderboards and Steam achievements, although the multiplayer mode may also be restricted to the Steam version when it arrives.
Buckshot Roulette is out now on Steam. It’s 10% off in a Steam sale until Thursday, April 11 to celebrate the game’s launch on the Valve platform, meaning you’ll pay just $2.69/£2.24 if you buy it now, or $2.99/£2.49 afterward. Either way, that’s a pretty reasonable price of entry, though beware of what you’ll face within.
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