High Stakes

High Stakes is a single-player card game. The player’s blood has been stolen by vampires, and the goal is to win it back - 5,000 ml in total - starting with just 20 ml. To recover it, the player must challenge four vampire opponents in a series of gambling card games.

Each game is played in rounds. In each round, the player is dealt nine cards face-down in a 3x3 grid, with one card revealed at the start. The cards include numbers 2 through 9 and a single Vampire card. The objective is to flip over all eight numbered cards without uncovering the Vampire. Flipping the Vampire ends the round in failure and deducts the accumulated stakes from the player's total.

At any point, while at least three cards remain face-down, the player can use a wooden stake to stab a face-down card. If the stabbed card was the Vampire, the player wins the round with a bonus. If not, the round is lost.

Against the first vampire, the stakes begin at 2 ml and increase by 1 ml with each card flipped. Winning a round gives a 2 ml bonus. The player can also choose to pass a round early, keeping the accumulated stakes but incurring a 2 ml penalty. Each of the four vampires offers increasingly higher stakes, scaling as powers of ten, but requires a blood buy-in to face.

Uncovering an entire row or column in the 3x3 grid grants a Hint Token, usable during the current round. There are three types:

• White Token: Place it on a face-down card to reveal a number. The card’s value is guaranteed to be at least that number (the Vampire counts as 10).
• Red Token: Place it on a revealed card to show whether adjacent face-down cards are higher or lower in value.
• Blue Token: Highlights a 2x2 area which contains the Vampire card.

The game was originally developed as an entry into itch.io's "A Game By Its Cover Jam 2020".