i've never really played poker. i've played poker minigames in stuff. i know the hands at least sort of. i know about bluffing and raising and folding. the idea of reading people in games like this was always so compelling to me, and something i imagine is difficult to execute in a game. sunshine shuffle makes a very, very strong case for it. the characters, how they play, how they change, how they unmask. its so simple and still so well executed.
the first one we meet is fidelius, the kind old sea dog. he introduces the player character and why we're there. i play the investigator, hired by the fishie mob to investigate the biggest heist ever pulled on them. my ultimate decision will be whether i let them walk free or hand them over to the mob, killing them. i play poker with them.
the first character i remember starting to talk openly is andie, the crew's driver and shooter. a middle-aged otter woman. she's working as an insurance agent, but used to have a promising career as an athlete. she was practically a minor celebrity. she plays a straightforward game. when she goes in on a hand you can be confident she has something. the more savvy players know to be wary of her raises. her athletic career was devastated in a tragic car accident. she was, ironically, rushing her rival to the hospital when it happened. her rival went on to see the success she never would. she recalls a time where the company she works at now was considering bringing that rival on as a spokesperson. i ask her what happened. andie says, quietly, in the game's only uncensored swear word: "I vetoed the bitch." While andie is usually not one to play a losing hand, she will bluff, and i swear i can see her smirk when it happens.
jordan is the youngest of the crew. only 15 years old when they pulled the heist. he has a loud, prickly personality. he shouts obscenities despite being sat right next to a kid. he’s a gambler to the end as well. he will go in on anything if goaded no matter what he’s holding. of all the players, it’s definitely easiest to knock him out of the tournament first. he had a rough childhood. even when he’s shouting and insulting the other people in the crew, you can tell there’s a deep underlying trust he has in all of them. i think he’s the first one who mentioned brutus, the absent member of the crew. the glue that bound them together. the one who died. it’s clear that they all miss him dearly, especially jordan.
peter’s an interesting one. the crew’s resident hacker and a cockatiel(? just guessing honestly, but some kinda bird for sure.) he’s nervous and uncomfortable and it is initially hard to imagine how he fell in with a crew that pulled off such a daring heist on some of the most dangerous people around. of all the quirks in playstyle his is the most obvious. he’s an absolute coward. the moment a raise hits the table he’s likely to withdraw. eventually the topic of parents comes about. people share stories of the parents they have and don’t. peter talks about his dad, how loving and supportive he was. but he got cancer. they were poor and could barely afford cost of living, let alone chemo. it was a struggle to make ends meet until a man offered him some money to make him a beneficiary of his life insurance policy. when that wasn’t enough, the man offered more for him to stop taking treatment. peter talks about his dad bringing him home a new game console, not even questioning how he was able to afford it. at this point, peter is playing differently. i genuinely cant tell if it’s just ironic timing for a bug in the ai or brilliant dynamic storytelling. peter talks about his first hack, finding the man who paid his dad to die. he talks about ruining him. exposing everything. taking everything. he talks about learning that the man killed himself. he ponders if he should’ve felt guilty. he raises again. jordan follows by going all in. peter reveals a three of a kind, taking jordan out of the tournament.
lastly, the odd one out at the table, billy. some cat kid. fidelius shamefully admits that he had to let him play because he owes him 14,000 dollars from a previous card game. you will probably find out why quickly. the kid’s a shark (not literally, he is still a cat). he plays smart. i said before i don’t know any real poker strategy, but i’m sure this ai was using it. he easily spends the majority of each tournament in a solid lead compared to the other players. a pretty safe strategy i followed when i was starting was just folding whenever he did. while the rest of the cast fills you in on tales of their grand crime spree, billy offers his own color commentary as a snarky kid with zero skin in the game. the crew fluctuates between being annoyed by him and being oddly charmed by him. repeatedly, he prods fidelius to tell him what happened to his eye. fidelius doesn’t budge. in fact, i’ll come back to billy later.
let’s talk about fidelius. the crew’s co-founder and leader. he never plays cards. never shows his hand. never tells you why he’s wearing that eyepatch. he sits on the side, happy to add a bit of color to the story, or comment on an exciting play. it reflects a weariness, he’s too tired to keep playing anymore. but there’s also a fear there. he carries a deep shame for losing the crew’s missing member.
they all tell the story of how the last heist went wrong. it’s clear they all blame themselves. jordan recalls the last time he saw brutus, covered in blood, trying to get him to safety. he had a kid to think of. younger than jordan, but still. billy asks what kind of animal brutus was. “a cat” someone answers nonchalantly. then the realization sets in. who billy is, why fidelius let him be here. it’s a shock to billy too, who never knew his dad’s name. he understands now why his mother wouldn’t let fidelius inside the house. we start a new hand. right after the blind, billy folds.
i tell the crew that the young new leader of the fishie mob wants blood. even if i don’t tell him i found them, someone else he hired will. i agree to fake their deaths. i can get ahold of some bodies and convince the mob their dirty work has already been done by time. andie chimes in and says she would like to die in a particularly gruesome car crash, so i don’t have to have find a body that’s too similar to her. i thank her for her thoughtfulness. jordan says he should die by overdose. he imagines it’s what people would expect of him anyway. peter doesn’t want to think about it. fidelius is happy to die at sea. he doesn’t think it’ll be a hard sell. fidelius thanks me, and offers me a seat at the table whenever i like, extending the same invitation to billy. credits roll.
i don’t think this game made me any better at poker, but the way that this game so easily pulled me into reading people through cards despite my rudimentary-at-best knowledge of the game is extraordinary. even if 99% of it was me reading into something that wasn’t there, this game sets the groundwork for reading like this so well. you can read it as any conversation can happen during any hand, but i challenge you to wonder why THIS conversation happens during THIS hand. maybe it won’t be something profound every time, but when it is, it IS. and i love that about this game. also has an AMAZING soundtrack. 10/10