At Project House, Leeds over 40 games will be demoing, along with 300+ developers, game industry publishers, investors and platforms in attendance for GaMaYo 26! Join us on the 21st of May for a day full of demos and round tables, networking and more.

This event is brought to you by Game Republic along with their Official Partners Red Kite Games, Xsolla and Double Eleven, with event sponsors Plus Accounting, Kudos Games and Steel City Interactive.

Today we are looking at ‘Dealing with Death’ which is confirmed to be at the event, from Play Any Games!

Dealing with Death, by Play Any Games

What would be your description of your game?

In Dealings With Death, you play a twisted version of baccarat against Death, trying to get a better hand than him. The closer to 9 your hand is, the better. But be careful, even 1 above 9 will loop you back to 0. But the odds aren’t all stacked against you. As you play, you’ll collect items to spend against Death. Items gather information, manipulate cards, and give you an advantage. But a bet is never 100%, as Death isn’t fair. He wins draws, so even if you have the perfect hand value of 9, there’s still a chance you lose. Death is inevitable, so you will eventually die. That matters not, as Death will keep a track of your money pot in his ledger. Maybe your next attempt will be better!

How did development start? (Were there any key inspirations or ideas that drove you?)

We heard about Jamsepticeye 2025 a few weeks in advance and decided to do it. The topic was “Death is an Opportunity”. Development started after we pivoted a day into the jam from another game, which was turning out to feel like a generic platformer about a zombie, into a more interesting idea: a gambling game about betting your lives against Death. This decision left us with 3 and a half days to rush through development, meaning that, behind the scenes, the game is held together with spaghetti and marshmallows.

The game draws heavy inspiration from, of course, baccarat. We scoured all sorts of gambling games to find a fun one to adapt, and settled on baccarat because of its relatively simple and easy to adapt ruleset. It included a lot of wrestling with the rules to make it fun yet simple, but we managed to throw together a prototype in an hour to prove we could make it. Then we dressed the game up in a style inspired by Inscryption and Buckshot Roulette, and many Quixel Megascan assets.

Tell us about the team behind the game?

Four game design graduates from York St John University, who agreed to try making a game together after graduation. The game jam felt like a natural progression of that, and Dealing’s With Death was the outcome. We’re now working on a more polished version of the game for a full release.

What kind of experiences do you hope to bring players?

We hope to combine the exponentially increasing numbers and satisfying combos of Balatro and Cloverpit, with the ambience and mystery of games like Inscryption, Buckshot Roulette, and Inkshade. In a full release, we aim to offer rewarding decisions about which items to choose and how to curate a deck to beat increasingly difficult quotas of money from Death.