New Card Shark video teaches you how to cheat ahead of June release
Have you heard of The Shiner?
Tony Wilson 
Image via Nerial
Ever since it was announced, Card Shark has gotten the attention of more than a few indie game fans who were intrigued by its combination of a standard card game and outright cheating. It’s set in “a world where you’ll need to play your opponents better than you play your cards” according to developer Nerial, and a new pre-release video reinforces that.
The team is releasing a series of videos that will show you not just how to cheat in Card Shark, but how to cheat in real life too. The first video, as shared by Nerial on Twitter, covers a technique known as The Shiner. Nicolai Troshinsky, one of the game’s artists and animators, demonstrates how a reflective object placed on the table gives you an unfair advantage. While dealing cards face down, you can pass the card over the object and catch its reflection, informing you of what the otherwise anonymous card actually is. In Card Shark, this technique can be carried out with a small mirror; in real life, your own cell phone has a reflective enough screen to pull this off.
This is the first video in a series that Nerial produced, so expect to learn other techniques as we get closer to the game’s launch. The image at the top of this article shows a waiter peering over the shoulder of a card player and pickpocketing them — two more sneaky ways to cheat. As we learned from previewing the game at LudoNarraCon 2022, these tricks are performed with certain controller inputs. They won’t always go according to plan, and you can absolutely be arrested if you’re caught in a scam.
Card Shark was previously delayed into 2022, but now it’s locked in for launch on Thursday, June 2 on PC and Nintendo Switch. As announced during the most recent Indie World Showcase, a Switch demo is available now for those who want to try all the tricks for themselves.
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