It feels like each week there’s a new entry in the genre that is largely known as “friendslop”. Marked by low-priced games focused on multiplayer fun, these games tend to emphasize collaborating with friends to achieve a goal. One of the latest games to take Steam by storm is Gamble With Your Friends, which puts you and your friends into a casino with a quota. I’m often looped into these releases by family and friends, and while it’s far from revolutionary, Gamble With Your Friends can be a chaotic, fun time, at least for a few hours.
To The Casino We Go
Gambling has slowly marched everywhere into our society, from casinos to sports betting, and now even “prediction markets” that attempt to pose as anything but gambling. It’s interesting to see this genre attempt the casino, and I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t happened before this. Gamble With Your Friends starts with you and up to five of your friends preparing for a run to the casino. You have a limited number of Tickets, which are used to purchase items that can dramatically increase your winnings. Once you make your purchases, it’s off to the casino, where multiple floors await.
Familiarity with each of the games depends on how familiar you are with them in real life. If you’re someone like me who lives within an hour of the world’s largest casino, you probably know what you’re doing with craps, blackjack, roulette, and others. However, if not, it might take a minute to understand how the games work. Most are pretty easy to pick up, but Gamble With Your Friends does not offer any tutorial beyond a simple one-sentence sign at each game.
The game moves you through timed days, where you have a quota that you must meet to progress. The loan sharks don’t play, after all. You can meet this on any of the games, and it’s up to you how much you wager. As you might expect, it’s pretty easy to run into situations where you end up thousands of dollars in the green, and a friend goes millions in the red. This dynamic is what makes this experience fun, as you are constantly racing to meet the quota without dipping below it. However, you or your friends can lose everything with the press of a button. Of course, as you’d expect with the genre, this is where the fun of the game lies. There’s voice chat in the game, and it’s hard to beat the laughs you’ll get when a friend screams over the microphone across the floor.
I found the overall selection of games to be solid. My luck was certainly better on some machines than others. Often, I’d go directly to Slots and end up 500%, but I could just as easily bet everything on the duck race for big bucks. Some of these games, like Slots, felt unbalanced and offered easy winnings every round, and some, like Blackjack, only gave me a win once or twice. It’s luck of the draw, but I do feel some machines absolutely gave better luck than others. Upon every few successful rounds, you’ll unlock higher floors of the casino that offer new games. These games do not change between runs, and I wish there were some variety thrown at you. The stakes are, of course, higher as you progress, but changes to the games themselves could have made for a more replayable and interesting gameplay loop.
The best feature of gameplay is the ticket system, as it offers something unique that could really spice things up. There’s a bottle of vodka that, when drunk, can hugely level up your profits. I often went for this and the books available, which could lower loss amounts, increase profit, and reward tickets. You can also spend tickets on clothing items to customize your characters, but be wary, as these come from the same pool as items. As part of this system, Gamble With Your Friends offers you the ability to cut off a limb, an eye, or your mouth in exchange for tickets. By doing this, you can earn extra tickets that can be essential in acquiring items to meet your quota for the day. However, this process does not come without its consequences. Turning over your mouth will prevent you from talking in the game until a new one is bought, and limbs require another player to carry you around. The challenges this creates can be fun and do create some variety and strategy during each run.
Overall, the gameplay loop for Gamble With Your Friends is as you’d expect. It’s mostly fun and perfect for your gambling friends as there’s no real money involved. However, as I mentioned, I really do wish there were more variety in the games themselves. It’s not fun to go farm slots for the 20th time every round when loading into a brand new game. I would have appreciated seeing these machines change and throw new challenges at me beyond the ability to bet more money.
Fine Enough
I cannot say that Gamble With Your Friends is unfun or inherently not worth your time considering the price, but I walked away wanting more from this experience. This is largely a problem with the “friendslop” genre as a whole, but it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll have seen all the game has to offer after just an hour or two. Sure, this one has some unique elements that add a twist, such as the ticket system and leveraging body parts, but the games themselves don’t change at all.
Even after days of filling the quota, it’s the same old process as you walk into the casino, even with the higher floors. This is a common critique I have with this genre, and one that can make the games appear as a template of one another. I had fun for the handful of hours I played with friends, but I can’t say I have any desire to return now that we’ve had our fill of blackjack and slots. What new experience awaits if we do return?
In the end, if you are looking for a new game to play with friends, this can be an option. It’s priced reasonably and won’t break the bank, but there is only so much to see here. If you want a game you can return to time and time again, it may be best to look elsewhere. However, for a quick few hours of fun that will get your gambling fix in? This may do.
Disclaimer: Gamble With Your Friends was reviewed on PC (Steam).
