This Ain't Even Poker, Ya Joker Review

As soon as you start, a jester demands to know who you are and why you are in this carnival. He takes great offence when you call the Jester a Joker, and because of that, he will keep you trapped there forever. There is, however, one exception: if you can collect one billion in gold coins by playing a card game, he will let you out. You agree, saying that you are great at poker. His response? “This ain’t even poker, ya joker.” Thus, the name of the game.

The jester is right, this card game is definitely not traditional poker. It is actually a card clicker — style game, and there isn’t a large amount of strategy involved. Most of the strategy comes from making purchases on the upgrade tree. There is a huge variety of things to unlock using the gold coins you collect from flipping cards, so once you have accumulated enough money, head over to this area; this is where you can maximise the number of coins you earn from the cards you flip.

At the start, you have one deck, where you can flip each card at a time. Since it’s a single card, it is called a high card, just like it would be in poker. As you earn more money, you can increase the number of cards you are able to flip at once, with each additional card costing more than the last, up to a maximum of five. This is where things get really interesting, as you may randomly expose a scoring poker hand, such as three of a kind or a straight.

This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker will tell you when you have enough gold to purchase upgrades, as well as how many are available to you. These upgrades give you perks, such as earning 33% more coins from a manual card flip. There are three versions of this power-up, each one costing more to unlock but providing a greater bonus than the last. You can even unlock an automatic card flipper, which starts off quite slow, clicking a card once every six seconds, but, like everything else, can be upgraded to go faster. Keep in mind that some upgrade perks only work with manual clicking, while others are designed for use with the automatic mode.

The game allows you to play with up to ten decks at once, each with five cards. Once you have that many on the play area, your view zooms out so you can see everything at a glance, although there is an upgrade that allows you to move the camera around and zoom in if you wish. You might be concerned that it would be difficult to keep track of this many cards at once, but it really isn’t, as you don’t actually have to do anything. The game automatically calculates the best poker hands you have created with the exposed cards, allowing you to sit back and watch it all happen on its own.

This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker looks really nice. The only things in view are the table you are playing on and your decks of cards. The game is very visually pleasing: the card decks look realistic, and when a card is flipped, coins pop out while a light traces the perimeter of the high card in your hand. If there are matching cards or a scoring poker hand, a burst of rainbow lights shoots out from behind your cards like fireworks. On the right-hand side of the screen, you will also see Lester’s Ledger, which shows how much gold you currently have and how close you are to the one billion total. To complement all the bright colours and flashy lights, the soundtrack is reminiscent of a carnival or circus, and it fits perfectly.

As you progress, you gain the ability to merge cards, and there are various achievements to unlock. Even when you are getting high-scoring hands, it will take a long time to reach the required one billion gold. So don’t assume this is a game you will finish quickly as you will be stuck there for a while waiting. Thankfully, the game allows you to save at any time, so you can quit without losing your progress.

If you are looking for a fairly mindless clicker game, This Ain’t Even Poker, Ya Joker is a title you may want to pick up on PC. It requires the use of a mouse, so trying to play it on the Steam Deck while on the go did not really work for me. The game is incredibly easy to play, as most of the time you are simply sitting back and watching everything happen automatically. Personally, I would have enjoyed it more if there had been more player involvement, like deciding which poker hands I wanted to aim for with the cards you flip.