A cribbage roguelite deckbuilder. One peg, one board, one tournament tour at a time.
You're a traveling cribbage player working your way up the Long Tally, a tour that starts at regional clubs and ends at the national championship. Every match is a real cribbage match. Deal six. Drop two to the crib. Peg the round. Count the four cards in your hand against the cut.
Between matches, you build the player who shows up to the next one. Between tours, you build the player who walks back into the next tour.
Three ways to play
- Campaign: the full Long Tally tour, with persistent unlocks, peg selection, and the campaign-layer build that carries between runs.
- vs AI: one-off matches against AI opponents at three skill tiers and three personalities. No campaign, no progression. Just cribbage.
- Online Multiplayer: head-to-head cribbage against another human, outside the campaign. Matchmaking and direct lobbies.
The run and the campaign
A run is one tournament tour from a regional club through nationals, with different opponents in every zone. Within a run, you build a temporary loadout: powerups that change how your hands score, consumables you spend between matches, crayons that mark specific cards for the duration of a single tour. When the run ends, the build resets.
The campaign sits above the runs. Across many tours, you earn permanent markers on specific cards, unlock different pegs to play as, and climb a tree of milestones that persists win or lose. The run's build is loud. The campaign's build is patient.
How the count builds
Cribbage already stacks small scores into bigger ones. The four cards you keep plus the cut combine into fifteens, pairs, runs, and flushes. A run of three with two fifteens is eight points. A run of four in a flushed hand can clear twenty before any modifiers fire.
The roguelite layer takes the count past where a kitchen-table game would stop. A powerup that triggers on every fifteen pushes a fifteens-heavy hand into the thirties and forties. A crayon on your favorite card doubles whatever it touches. Two or three good builds in a run and the counts grow into territory regular cribbage doesn't reach.
Powerups, consumables, and marks
Three systems shape your build.
- Powerups: modifiers that fire on specific scoring events. Some trigger on fifteens. Some trigger on pairs. Some trigger on the run-ending Go. Stack them and the synergies stack with them.
- Consumables: one-use items you spend during a match for a specific effect. One use, one decision.
- Marks: enhancements applied to specific cards. Crayons last for one tour. Markers carry across the entire campaign. A doubled Five. A penalized Jack. A card that scores twice when it shows up.
Cribbage, if you've never played
Cribbage is a 350-year-old card game played to 121 points. Two players take six cards, drop two each into a side pile called the crib, then take turns laying cards down to a running count that resets at 31. The pegging round is a tactical poke and parry. Then both players reveal their four-card hands and count the score against a randomly cut fifth card: every fifteen, every pair, every run, every flush, every nob.
We kept all the rules. The roguelite layer is the wrapper, not the replacement. If you have played cribbage at a kitchen table, the math is the same from minute one.
What's in the box
- Three game modes: Campaign, vs AI, and Online Multiplayer.
- A campaign of tournament tours from regional clubs through the national championship.
- Different opponents in every zone, each with their own personality and skill tier.
- Multiple pegs to play as, each with their own play personality.
- A growing roster of powerups, consumables, crayons, and campaign markers.
Early Access
Double Skunk is launching in Early Access while the campaign content and balance fill in. The core systems are stable: the scoring engine, the pegging round, the powerups, the marks, the campaign layer, all three game modes. The content is still growing: more opponents per zone, more rings on the campaign tree, more tuning passes against real player runs.
We're aiming for a content update every six to eight weeks during Early Access, and a 1.0 release once the full ring of opponents is in and the tuning has had time to settle against the EA cohort's runs.
If that sounds like a game you want to help shape, wishlist now and the page will notify you the day the demo lands.
