Blackjack Attack

The appeal of Blackjack is all in the pure and immediate way it deals with risk and reward.

You’re on 19 with four cards. Your head’s telling you to stick, but your heart’s urging you to go for the five card trick. Your heart wins out, you flip a seven, you go bust.

Surprisingly, Blackjack Attack risks spoiling the very essence of Blackjack by warning you of what’s coming next. In fact, it informs you what the next two cards are going to be.

Sounds awful, no?

It’s not. By playing with the rules slightly and shifting the focus onto the split-second decision making side of the game, Blackjack Attack makes for a refreshingly different take.

The basis for this shift is that you must play multiple hands (from three to five) simultaneously. The cards are dealt two at a time, and you must decide which hand each card is going to go towards by touching the appropriate pile (or using one of your limited ‘skip’ commands).

The idea is to get as high a score as possible across each hand, without going bust with any of them. If that sounds simple, there’s a strict time limit to adhere to (brilliantly illustrated by a rapidly depleting bar), which increases the pressure considerably.

There’s also the fact that you must attain a certain score if you’re to progress to subsequent bonus rounds, which can only be achieved by scoring well with five card tricks, Soft 21s, and the like.

It’s an excellent idea, the core of which is well realised with solid, simple controls and clear presentation. There’s also a satisfying ‘whoosh’ to accompany each placed card.

At the moment, though, it’s a rather bare bones offering. The game needs a greater level of polish and a better sense of reward if it’s to compete with the finest casual games out there.

The end of level tot-up, for example, resembles an accounts spreadsheet when it should be a simple, fireworks-strewn celebration of your achievements. The game also lacks both a proper single-player structure and an online high score facility, simply encouraging you to best your own scores.

Nevertheless, Blackjack Attack is a good idea executed proficiently. I’d bet my house on the fact that a much expanded version would deal significant damage to anyone’s spare time.