“Buckshot Roulette” is a recent horror game released by indie developer Mike Klubnika. Klubnika started releasing games within the last four years, with most of his early work being free downloads. Klubnika has since moved on to paid games with the release of “Unsorted VHS,” and most recently “Buckshot Roulette,” but he keeps the price to a couple of dollars at most. Due to this low price point and intriguing horror atmosphere, Klubnika’s games were the perfect target to get popular online. Unfortunately, most of his games remained niche until recently, when “Buckshot Roulette” started to grow in popularity.
“Buckshot Roulette” was released on Dec. 28, 2023, and quickly gained popularity on TikTok and YouTube. The game was able to strike a perfect balance between an unsettling, mysterious horror atmosphere and a repeatable, fast-paced gameplay style. Additionally, the game is incredibly simple. There’s a shotgun on the table and a dealer on the other side. Each round the dealer loads a random amount of blank and live shells, in a random order, and each turn comes with a decision: fire at yourself, hoping for a blank, or fire at the dealer, hoping for a live round. Each character has a limited amount of health determined at the start of each stage, and rounds continue until one character runs out of health. If the dealer loses, then the game progresses to the next stage. Later on, both characters receive the ability to use certain items. Every round characters are given the same amount of randomly decided items to help influence the game. This mechanic is what keeps most players coming back for more of this simple game.
Despite being a simple and short game, only around 15 minutes to beat, the addictive nature of the gameplay keeps you crawling back. A recent update even added an endless game mode with special rules, so the developer clearly knows what makes the game fun. Additionally, with this being his most popular release yet, updates probably won’t stop anytime soon, and this game may change the indie horror genre forever.
