Buckshot Roulette Review (2026): Is This Shotgun Horror Game Still Worth Playing?
- Niels Gys
- 5 days ago
- 13 min read
Quick Verdict
Buckshot Roulette is absolutely worth playing if you want a short, tense, brilliantly nasty game of probability, item management and poor firearm etiquette.
The main single-player run is extremely short, usually around 15 to 20 minutes, but the low price, Double or Nothing mode and online multiplayer give it far more life than its tiny footprint suggests.
It is not a sprawling horror game. It is not a story-heavy campaign. It is not trying to occupy your next six weekends and then demand a seasonal battle pass.
It is a shotgun, a table, a handful of shells and one appalling decision after another.
And it works.
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What Is Buckshot Roulette?
Buckshot Roulette is a first-person strategy-horror game developed by Mike Klubnika and published on Steam by Critical Reflex.
The original version appeared on itch.io in December 2023, before arriving on Steam in April 2024. The Steam release added achievements, leaderboards and later received a free multiplayer update supporting two to four players.
The premise is wonderfully simple.
You sit across from a creature known as the Dealer and play Russian roulette with a pump-action shotgun. The weapon is loaded with a visible number of live shells and blanks, but their order remains hidden.
Each turn, you choose where to aim.
At the Dealer.
Or at yourself.
This is the sort of game concept normally invented at 3:00 in the morning by three people who have found a shotgun, a calculator and absolutely no adult supervision.
The genius is that Buckshot Roulette does not ruin the idea by smothering it under unnecessary systems. There is no open world. No skill tree. No crafting bench requiring twelve pieces of damp copper and the pancreas of a regional miniboss.
You sit down.
You assess the odds.
You pull the trigger.
What You Actually Do
At the start of each load, the Dealer reveals how many live rounds and blanks are entering the shotgun.
The order is then randomised.
From there, you choose whether to shoot your opponent or yourself.
Shooting the Dealer is the obvious aggressive option, but it normally passes control of the shotgun after the shot. Shooting yourself is riskier, but if the shell is blank, you keep the weapon and take another turn.
That single rule creates almost the entire game.
Imagine three blanks and one live shell remain.
Shooting yourself gives you a strong chance of retaining control. It also gives you a smaller but very real chance of blowing a hole through your own tactical planning department.
Shooting the Dealer is safer personally, but a blank hands him the shotgun.
Every choice becomes a calculation involving probability, health, remaining items and whether the Dealer currently has enough equipment to turn your next move into a medical documentary.
The early rounds are straightforward.
Then the items arrive.
The Items Turn Chance Into Strategy
Buckshot Roulette is often described as a luck-based game, which is only half true.
Luck decides the order of the shells.
Skill decides what you do with the information available.
Items allow you to inspect, remove, alter and exploit the ammunition still inside the gun. Depending on the mode, you may receive tools that:
Reveal the current shell.
Eject the current shell.
Double the damage of the next live shot.
Restore health.
Force the Dealer or another player to miss a turn.
Reveal a future shell.
Reverse a shell from live to blank or blank to live.
Steal an opponent’s item.
Gamble health for a chance at greater recovery.
This is where the game stops being a novelty and becomes a proper tactical duel.
A magnifying glass can confirm whether the current shell is live. A hand saw can then increase the damage. Handcuffs can prevent the Dealer from responding. Adrenaline can steal exactly the item needed to complete a lethal sequence.
At that point, you are no longer gambling blindly.
You are conducting hostile bookkeeping with ammunition.
The best moments come from using several small pieces of information to create certainty in a game built around uncertainty. You remember what has already been fired, inspect what remains, manipulate the chamber and suddenly realise the next move is guaranteed.
Then you discover you forgot one shell three turns ago and the entire plan collapses like a pension fund managed by raccoons.
The Dealer Is Half the Game
The Dealer is one of the most memorable indie horror characters of recent years despite barely speaking.
He is enormous, pale, permanently grinning and behaves with the calm professionalism of a casino employee who has already witnessed six fatalities and still intends to take his lunch break at noon.
What makes him effective is that he does not spend the game shrieking, cheating or delivering theatrical speeches about your soul.
He simply runs the table.
He loads the shotgun.
He uses items.
He follows the same general rules.
That restraint gives him more personality than many villains receive across thirty pages of lore entries and a final boss monologue delivered beside a collapsing energy beam.
The Dealer does not need to explain himself.
The room, the waiver, the money and the shotgun have already completed the presentation.
The Atmosphere Is Exceptional
Buckshot Roulette takes place inside an underground nightclub bathroom or back room, depending on how charitable you are feeling about the plumbing.
The walls shake with distant music. The lighting is filthy. The equipment looks industrial and unpleasant. Everything appears damp in a way that should concern both health inspectors and electricians.
The setting is minimal, but every part of it contributes.
There are no lengthy cutscenes explaining how the nightclub was founded by an ancient society of shotgun accountants.
There are no collectible letters from previous victims.
The game trusts the room to tell the story.
That decision is correct.
The atmosphere feels oppressive without becoming visually noisy. The sound design gives every shell load, trigger pull and mechanical click more weight than several modern shooters manage with budgets large enough to purchase a small European municipality.
The shotgun is not merely a weapon.
It is the clock, the judge and the entire human resources department.
The Main Game Is Very Short
The biggest warning is also the easiest to explain.
The standard single-player game is tiny.
A full successful run can take around 15 to 20 minutes. You play through three increasingly dangerous rounds against the Dealer, with more health, items and complications appearing as the match progresses.
That length will disappoint anyone expecting a traditional horror campaign.
There are no chapters.
No exploration.
No large narrative arc.
No moment where the protagonist discovers the nightclub was built over a secret military laboratory because apparently every horror building must eventually contain one.
Buckshot Roulette is closer to a deadly tabletop game than a conventional first-person horror title.
That is not a flaw by itself.
The game is honest about its scale, and its low price reflects the amount of content. The problem only appears when someone sees the visual style, assumes they are buying a five-hour horror story and discovers the credits before their tea has cooled.
Double or Nothing Adds the Real Replayability
Once you defeat the Dealer, Double or Nothing mode becomes the main single-player reason to return.
Instead of ending after the standard sequence, you continue through repeated sets of rounds and choose whether to walk away with your winnings or risk everything for a larger score.
This mode expands the item pool and makes each run less predictable.
Health values change.
Item combinations become more elaborate.
The pressure grows because losing does not merely end a match. It erases the score you have been greedily dragging through several rounds while repeatedly telling yourself that one more cycle is a sensible financial decision.
This is where Buckshot Roulette reveals its true subject.
It is not death.
It is greed.
You can leave.
You are repeatedly given the opportunity to leave.
Then the game places a larger number in front of you and watches your survival instincts get mugged by arithmetic.
Double or Nothing is excellent for score chasing, but it also exposes the game’s repetition. The room remains the same. The central actions remain the same. The Dealer remains the same large dental emergency.
Players looking for permanent upgrades, unlockable characters or wildly different builds will eventually reach the limits of the system.
There is also no convenient way to preserve a long active run through a normal save-and-quit structure, which makes extended sessions more demanding than they need to be.
The design appears to assume nobody has ever been interrupted by work, family, sleep or a delivery driver who has parked three streets away and now considers the parcel your responsibility.
Multiplayer Makes the Game Better
The free multiplayer update added online matches for two to four players.
This was exactly what Buckshot Roulette needed.
The Dealer is effective, but human beings bring panic, negotiation, grudges and irrational confidence to the table.
Players can bargain.
Players can bluff.
Players can cooperate briefly.
Players can then abandon that cooperation the moment a live shell appears and personal survival becomes more important than the solemn alliance formed eleven seconds earlier.
Multiplayer also includes additional tools designed for group play, including items that can skip another player’s turn or reverse the direction of play.
The underlying mechanics remain simple, but social behaviour adds chaos that AI cannot fully recreate.
A mathematically sensible match can disintegrate because one player decides to fire at themselves twice in a row for reasons known only to them and whatever authority eventually investigates the incident.
Private matches with friends are the best way to play.
Public matches are less reliable due to reports of exploits and cheating methods involving hidden shell information and manipulated player actions. Not every public lobby will contain someone performing digital witchcraft inside the ammunition system, but a game based entirely on concealed information suffers badly when that information is no longer concealed.
Buckshot Roulette is at its strongest when everyone at the table is equally uncertain and equally untrustworthy.
Buckshot Roulette proves one thing: sometimes the scariest enemy is not a monster. Sometimes it is your own confidence holding a loaded weapon.
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Is Buckshot Roulette Pure Luck?
No.
Randomness matters, but the game gives you enough information and manipulation tools to make skill important.
Good players track:
How many live shells remain.
How many blanks remain.
Which shells have already been fired.
What the Dealer knows.
Which items are available.
Whether damage can be doubled.
Whether the turn order can be controlled.
Whether a shell has been reversed or removed.
The difference between good and bad play becomes obvious once the item pool expands.
A weak player reacts to the current turn.
A strong player prepares the next two or three.
That said, luck can still flatten sensible decision-making.
Some rounds produce heavily uneven item distributions. Some shell orders punish the statistically correct choice. Certain combinations can leave one side with very little room to respond.
Probability is not fairness.
Probability is a man in a cheap suit throwing dice behind a locked door and refusing to answer questions.
The balance between luck and strategy is mostly successful, but anyone who becomes furious when correct decisions produce bad outcomes should approach with caution.
Buckshot Roulette will eventually reward intelligence by shooting it in the chest.
What Works
The Core Idea Is Excellent
The game takes one mechanic and fully commits to it.
There is no padding.
No walking section inserted because someone worried the player might notice the game was short.
No upgrade menu filled with tiny percentage increases designed to make twelve hours feel productive.
Every system supports the central duel.
That focus deserves praise.
The Item Combinations Are Satisfying
The best rounds are not won through blind luck.
They are won by combining information, health management and turn control until the randomness has been cornered and beaten with office supplies.
Each item is easy to understand.
The complexity comes from timing and combination rather than explanation.
That is good design.
The Presentation Is Distinctive
Buckshot Roulette looks and sounds like nothing else.
The visual style is ugly in the correct way. The room feels dangerous before anyone touches the weapon. The Dealer is instantly recognisable. The sound gives every action physical weight.
It is a tiny game with the confidence to look exactly as unpleasant as it needs to.
The Price Is Fair
The game has historically sold for only a few euros.
At that price, the short length feels deliberate rather than insulting.
A 20-minute game can still be good value if those 20 minutes contain more tension and personality than a bloated campaign where the player spends half the runtime following glowing footprints through shrubbery.
Multiplayer Extends the Lifespan
Single-player teaches the game.
Multiplayer keeps it alive.
The mechanics are perfectly suited to small groups, especially players who enjoy bluffing, risk and turning friendly conversation into an active crime scene.
What Does Not Work
The Single-Player Content Is Thin
Even with Double or Nothing, Buckshot Roulette does not offer vast amounts of content.
The setting never changes.
The opponent never changes.
The basic structure never changes.
Players who need constant unlocks and progression will exhaust the game quickly.
Repetition Arrives Early
Once you understand the items and shell logic, the remaining appeal comes from mastering the odds and chasing better runs.
That will be enough for some players.
Others will feel they have seen everything after an evening.
Neither reaction is unreasonable.
The game is a sharp knife, not a complete toolbox.
Randomness Can Create Ugly Rounds
Some starting situations give one side a much stronger collection of items.
In extreme cases, the Dealer can build a damaging sequence before the player has many meaningful options.
This is rare enough not to destroy the game, but common enough to irritate anyone who expects every loss to be the result of a clear mistake.
Sometimes you lose because you miscounted.
Sometimes you lose because the Dealer received the tactical equivalent of an aircraft carrier while you were handed a cigarette and medical advice from a bin.
Public Multiplayer Needs Caution
Reports of cheating and hidden-information exploits are a serious concern for public matches.
A game this small does not require military-grade anti-cheat infrastructure, but it does require players to trust that the shell order is genuinely hidden.
Without that trust, the entire match becomes theatre performed by people who already read the script.
The Options Are Basic
Performance is generally stable, and the system requirements are modest, but the settings and accessibility options are limited.
Steam Deck users have reported that the game can run acceptably, though official compatibility classification and presentation remain imperfect. Display support is basic, controls can feel awkward in places and cloud-saving support has also been criticised.
None of these problems ruin the experience.
They simply make the package feel rougher than the central design deserves.
Player Feedback
Player reception remains overwhelmingly positive.
The game has accumulated a very large number of positive Steam reviews, with praise consistently focused on the same strengths:
A simple but effective concept.
Strong atmosphere.
Excellent sound design.
Satisfying item interactions.
Low price.
High entertainment value with friends.
Short sessions that are easy to replay.
The most common complaints are equally consistent:
The single-player game is very short.
The loop becomes repetitive.
Luck can overwhelm good decisions.
Double or Nothing runs cannot be conveniently paused and preserved.
Multiplayer has experienced bugs, connectivity complaints and exploit concerns.
The options menu and accessibility support are sparse.
The community does not appear confused about what Buckshot Roulette is.
Players generally understand that it is a small, focused game.
The debate is simply whether that focus feels elegant or limited.
For most people, the low price settles the argument.
How It Compares to Similar Games
Buckshot Roulette vs. Inscryption
Both games use tabletop mechanics, hidden information and an unsettling opponent.
Inscryption is much larger and far more narrative-driven. It includes card-building, puzzles, exploration and a broader campaign.
Buckshot Roulette is faster, simpler and more immediately violent.
Choose Inscryption for depth.
Choose Buckshot Roulette when you want twenty minutes of pressure and the sensation that the furniture may be complicit.
Buckshot Roulette vs. Balatro
Both games revolve around probability, escalating risk and the dangerous belief that one more round will solve everything.
Balatro has far deeper build variety and long-term replayability.
Buckshot Roulette has stronger atmosphere, direct confrontation and multiplayer betrayal.
Balatro is a strategic obsession.
Buckshot Roulette is a bad evening in a nightclub basement.
Buckshot Roulette vs. CloverPit
CloverPit offers a broader gambling-horror structure built around slot-machine progression and survival.
Buckshot Roulette is more immediate and personal. You are not fighting an abstract system. You are staring directly at the creature benefiting from your mistakes.
CloverPit offers more progression.
Buckshot Roulette offers a better duel.
Who Should Buy Buckshot Roulette?
Buy it if you enjoy:
Short experimental games.
Probability and risk management.
Atmospheric indie horror.
Tabletop-style strategy.
Bluffing and betrayal with friends.
Games that teach their rules quickly.
High tension without a huge time commitment.
Score chasing in endless modes.
It is particularly easy to recommend for players who understand that short does not mean unfinished.
Some games last fifty hours because they have fifty hours of ideas.
Others last fifty hours because someone discovered the copy-and-paste function and received budget approval.
Buckshot Roulette knows when to stop.
Who Should Skip It?
Skip it if you want:
A long story campaign.
Detailed characters and lore.
Exploration.
Extensive permanent progression.
Dozens of opponents and locations.
Competitive public multiplayer with guaranteed fairness.
Complete control over outcomes.
Constant mechanical variety.
It is also a poor choice for anyone who hates randomness.
You can improve the odds.
You can manipulate the chamber.
You can build an intelligent sequence.
The shotgun is under no contractual obligation to respect your intelligence.
Final Verdict
Buckshot Roulette is a superb small game built around one excellent idea.
The core system is simple, but the items, shell tracking and turn manipulation give it enough strategy to remain engaging beyond the initial novelty. The presentation is filthy, confident and instantly memorable. The Dealer is one of those rare characters who becomes iconic without needing to explain his childhood for forty minutes.
The main weakness is content.
The standard run is extremely short. Double or Nothing eventually becomes repetitive. Multiplayer adds longevity, but public matches come with legitimate concerns about exploits and fairness.
None of that changes the central recommendation.
Buckshot Roulette is worth buying.
It is cheap, sharp and unusually respectful of the player’s time. It enters the room, establishes the rules, points a shotgun at conventional game design and leaves before anyone can schedule a committee meeting.
Just know what you are buying.
This is not a horror epic.
It is a beautifully engineered bad decision.
Another case file closed. The Dealer returns to his table, the shotgun gets reloaded, and CRIMENET goes hunting for the next beautifully questionable idea.
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FAQ
What do you do in Buckshot Roulette?
You play a modified form of Russian roulette against the Dealer or other players. Live and blank shotgun shells are loaded in a hidden order, and you use probability plus items to survive and eliminate your opponents.
Is Buckshot Roulette purely luck-based?
No. Random shell order and item distribution matter, but players can count remaining shells, inspect or eject ammunition, alter shell types, steal items and manipulate turn order.
How long is Buckshot Roulette?
The standard single-player session is officially described as approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Double or Nothing and multiplayer can extend playtime considerably.
Does Buckshot Roulette have multiplayer?
Yes. The Steam version supports online PvP for two to four players. Multiplayer was added as a free update on October 31, 2024.
Is Buckshot Roulette multiplayer safe from cheating?
Community researchers have demonstrated potential exploits involving visible shell order and packet manipulation. I could not verify that every reported vulnerability has received a complete official fix, so private matches with trusted players are preferable.
Is Buckshot Roulette worth buying in 2026?
Yes, provided you understand its scale. It is a polished, inexpensive and highly replayable short-form game, particularly with friends. Players seeking a lengthy campaign should look elsewhere.
Is the Dealer cheating?
The game presents the Dealer as using the same general odds and item framework as the player. The challenge comes from hidden shell order, random equipment and the Dealer’s decisions rather than an explicitly rigged-house mechanic.
Does Buckshot Roulette have an endless mode?
Yes. Double or Nothing allows players to continue through repeated cycles, risking accumulated winnings for a larger score.
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