Everything you need to know about playing Scoundrel online.
Scoundrel is a single-player roguelike dungeon-crawling card game created by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg in 2011. It uses a modified standard deck of playing cards where you explore a dungeon, fight monsters, collect weapons, and use health potions to survive. This website lets you play it instantly in your browser.
Yes, completely free. No account, no download, and no payment required. Just open the website and start playing.
This is an independent, fan-made web adaptation inspired by the original Scoundrel ruleset created by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original creators.
Scoundrel was designed by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg during Train Jam in 2011 — a game jam held on the multi-day train ride from Chicago to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
You start with 20 health. Cards are dealt four at a time to form a "room." You must interact with three of the four cards — fighting monsters, equipping weapons, or drinking potions. The fourth card carries over to the next room. Your goal is to clear the entire dungeon without your health reaching zero. Check our complete rules page for detailed instructions.
If you clear the entire dungeon, your remaining health points become your score. The maximum possible score is 20. If your health drops to zero, you lose and do not receive a score.
Avoiding a room shuffles all four visible cards back into the dungeon deck and deals a fresh room. However, you cannot avoid two rooms in a row — the button will be disabled if you just avoided the previous room.
When you first equip a weapon, yes. But once you use it to defeat a monster, it becomes "bound" — you can only use it on monsters of equal or lower strength than the last one defeated. See our strategy guide for weapon chaining tips.
This is a core rule. You may only consume one health potion per room (each set of four cards). Your health also cannot exceed your maximum (20 on Normal), so timing potion use is critical.
Easy — more forgiving for beginners. Normal — the classic 20 HP experience. Hard — a tougher challenge for experienced players. Select difficulty on the main menu.
A modified 52-card deck. Red face cards (Hearts/Diamonds Jacks, Queens, Kings) and red Aces are removed before play, leaving monsters (black cards), weapons (Diamonds 2–10), and potions (Hearts 2–10).
Yes! Scoundrel is fully responsive and works on any device — smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. The interface adapts automatically to your screen size.
Yes! Scoundrel is a Progressive Web App (PWA). Install it via your browser's "Add to Home Screen" option and play anytime without an internet connection.
All modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, and mobile browsers for Android and iOS.
Only anonymous usage statistics via Google Analytics. We do not collect any personally identifiable information. No accounts, no logins. See our privacy policy.