Sunshine Shuffle Review: You May Not Want To Go All In 

Sunshine Shuffle is simply playing Texas Hold ’em with cute graphics, terrible controls, decent music, and a boring background story. 

The game released by Strange Scaffold on Steam back on May 24th has positive reviews and was supposed to debut on Switch at the same time. However, it got delayed until May 31st on the console due to Nintendo’s concerns that the game was just teaching kids to gamble. Honestly, having played the game, their concerns were valid. If you’re looking to learn the card game, this is a fantastic simulator to learn the fundamentals. 

You may be asking, if there are rave reviews, why am I dipping my Dunkaroos on this game? On May 23rd, Xalavier Nelson, Jr, who runs Strange Scaffold, took to TikTok to make light of the fact his game was getting delayed and why. Many people genuinely seem to like the title, but that TikTok caused an influx of meme ratings that offer 5 stars for helping them learn how to gamble as a child.

SUNSHINE SHUFFLE IS SUPPOSED TO COME OUT TOMORROW ON SWITCH AND PC

KEYWORD BEING “SUPPOSED TO”

APPARENTLY, MY SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ABOUT THE GAME NOT TEACHING CHILDREN TO GAMBLE HAS UH

CONVINCED NINTENDO THAT THE GAME IS ABOUT CHILD GAMBLING pic.twitter.com/B8YY2zo0x0

— Xalavier Nelson Jr. (@WritNelson) May 23, 2023

I was given a Switch code for this review, so there were immediately some issues with the game that may not be present in the Steam counterpart. Honestly, some of it could be fixed with day one patches, but the rest is part of the game design. 

Has anyone seen the gameplay?

It’s a poker simulator. If you enjoy playing the card game, then this is the game for you. In fact, the story will seem to stop if the character that was talking busts and won’t pick the story back up until a new tournament is started. So, there were several hands that I was just forced to play with nothing but the groovy music and the incessant off hand comments from the players around the table about folding, betting, or raising. 

It’s a visual novel in the most basic sense of the genre. I played for three hours and was only prompted to make a choice three times beyond whether to raise, call, fold, or check. And I suspect that no matter what I choose of the two options offered, the dialog won’t change enough for it to matter. 

There is a shop in the game where you can spend different chips you earn from winning hands to customize your deck, chips, and tables. You can even decorate the ship and buy new outfits for the characters. However, most of the decorations can’t be seen in the background where the entire game takes place, so it’s almost a waste to use your chips on it. I got one of everything just to check it out and when it came to outfits, Seymour — a whale who runs the shop — had an option for a top hat that I thought was cute. 

Outfits are by far the most expensive at 250 chips, and when I spent that on Seymour, his head was turned in such a way that you couldn’t even see the addition to his head. It was a waste, as were all the decorations that aren’t in your line of sight when playing poker. 

Up, Up, Down, Down… B is yes?

Perhaps one of the biggest sins of this game is the controls. It’s clear that whoever mapped the buttons was working off a different console. Nintendo is infamous for having their buttons different from other consoles with the ‘A’ being the yes/accept/etc button and the ‘B’ being the opposite. In this title, that’s flipped with ‘B’ being yes and ‘A’ being no. 

Like with all console transitions, you get used to it, but it took me accidentally restarting my entire save file to learn that. 

Aside from the button flips, it’s clear that a controller wasn’t taken into account when it came to things like settings. Not only do you have to switch to the D-Pad to flip between options, but on the matters of where a scale for volume is involved, you CANNOT move it without selecting it with ‘B’ first, sliding it, and then hitting ‘B’ again to exit.

I seriously restarted the game because I thought it had frozen. It took handing the controller off to someone else and having them fiddle with it to realize how it was mapped.

Animal Crossing, Who? 

The graphics are, perhaps, the best aspect of the game. The art style is charming, and all of the comparisons to Animal Crossing are fair in so far as it’s about cute animals. 

From the design of each character down to the little cards at the bottom of the loading screen, I found nothing to complain about. 

Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of everything else

The audio is a toss-up. If everything wasn’t ENTIRELY too loud, it’d be fine. As it stands, I had to change the voice and the music down to the first notch to even be able to focus on the text. And you should expect to have to reconfigure your settings every time you load up the game because they reset to default after each boot up. 

The decision for how the characters sound is the only other comparison that can be drawn to Animal Crossing. They share the same warbling sounds that Animal Crossing seemed to make famous. It’s adorable until you get to Seymour. 

Seymour runs the shop and he wants to tell you about EVERY — SINGLE — ITEM. Every time you move to a different item, he will start talking about it. If you have any hope of exploring the shop with your sanity intact, you should turn the audio off. 

RIP HEADPHONES USERS!

I, unfortunately, needed to see all the items for the review and somehow got him in a loop of cacophonous noise. 

Spin me right round…

The music is great, but feels like it belongs in a different game. The ska soundtrack is upbeat and oftentimes doesn’t match the sad backstory that the characters are often relaying. It’s not a huge issue, but it can sometimes pull you from the story. 

There are only a few songs on the revolving soundtrack, but they’re long enough that you don’t feel like you’re being hit with the same track over and over again. 

There’s Not Much To Tell…

The story follows you. You’re an investigator hired by the Fishie Mob to track down the Morning Shift and get the story of a heist they pulled 12 years earlier on the Mob. The Morning Shift consists of Fidelius – the dog captain, Andie – the otter, Peter – the parakeet, Jacob – the capybara, and Brutus – a character that was killed off years ago. 

All of these characters are present except for Brutus, so who is the fox? Billie is a fox and a literal kid who had nothing to do with the original heist, he’s there to just fill space and take your chips. They go on and on about him being underage and yet Fidelius has built up a debt of $14,000 from playing cards with him. 

We get a lot of exposition about how the characters started off like anyone else, but due to circumstances beyond control turned to a life of crime. You get their backgrounds, and it’s not exactly bad storytelling, but the pacing is too slow to be engaging. 

Conclusion

If you like poker or visual novels that don’t give you much choice in how the story plays out, then this would be a great game for you to pick up for $9.99. If you want to take the plunge, you can find it on Steam, Itch.io, and soon on Switch. For me, however, I’m going to fold on this game.

If you want more games that integrate poker, you may enjoy Zoeti.

Final Verdict: 1.5/5

Available on: Switch (reviewed), PC; Publisher: Strange Scaffold; Developer: Strange Scaffold; Players: 1; Released: May 31, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $9.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Sunshine Shuffle provided by the publisher.