What is Online Scoundrel?

Online Scoundrel is a free, browser-based version of Scoundrel, a single-player dungeon-crawl card game played with a 44-card deck. There is no sign-up or download — it plays instantly in your browser.

How do you play Scoundrel?

Each room deals four cards and you resolve three of them. Clubs and spades are monsters you fight, diamonds are weapons you equip, and hearts are potions that restore health. Survive every room with your 20 health to win.

Is Online Scoundrel free?

Yes. Online Scoundrel is completely free to play, requires no account, and runs in any modern web browser on desktop or mobile.

How does the weapon rule work?

A fresh weapon can fight any monster, but once it slays one it may only be used against monsters strictly weaker than the last one it defeated. You can always choose to fight barehanded instead and take full damage.

Can you avoid a room?

Yes. Instead of fighting, you can flee a room and send all four of its cards to the bottom of the deck — but you cannot avoid two rooms in a row.

How is my score calculated?

If you win, your score is your remaining health, with a bonus if you finish at full health after playing a potion. If you lose, your score is negative: your health minus the total value of every monster still left in the dungeon.

Is this the same as the tabletop Scoundrel?

Yes. Online Scoundrel follows the canonical rules of Scoundrel by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg, including the strict weapon-degradation rule.

Hard Mode

How to Win Hard Mode

Hard mode strips out the escape hatch: you can't flee a room, so every card in the dungeon must be dealt with. That makes weapon management and damage control everything. Here's how to survive it.

What changes in hard mode

The only rule difference is running: there is none. In Classic you can flee a lethal room once; in Hard you're committed to every room. The deck, scoring, and combat rules are otherwise identical.

Weapon management is everything

With no escape, your weapon carries you. Equip early, and spend a fresh weapon's first (biggest) kill on the strongest monster it can beat — weapons degrade and can only kill monsters weaker than their last kill, so a wasted big weapon is often a lost run.

Treat health as a buffer

You'll take damage you can't dodge, so keep a cushion. Heal before you're desperate (but never above 20), and enter dangerous stretches with enough health to absorb a bad room without dying.

Play the room in the right order

You still play three of four cards and carry one over. Equip or heal first when it helps, take free weapon kills, and leave the single most dangerous card as the carry-over when you can't handle it yet.

Use bare hands on purpose

Punching out a small monster bare-handed keeps your weapon's kill ceiling high for the big threats ahead. Spend a little health now to keep the weapon strong later — a deliberate trade, not a last resort.

Plan two rooms ahead

Because you can't run, look past the current room: track the big monsters still in the deck and set up your weapon and health so the rooms you can't avoid are ones you can survive.

Take on hard mode

Pick Hard on the home screen and put this to the test.

Play Scoundrel