What kind of crazy person would call this a cozy game? This is set in a hard and unforgiving old west town, with gunfighters battling bad guys! The art is great but kind of harsh, the theme is hard, and the game … just doesn’t look cozy. But I argue that it kinda is! Check out why below …

Ace of Spaces is a solo or 2-Player cooperative game: players battle bad guys using Poker Hands to do damage; bigger and more powerful bad guys emerge as play continues!

Although Ace of Spades was originally released in 2025, the original publication was recalled because of some offensive cards. So, the publisher Devir re-released this game fairly recently in 2026, so we are calling this a 2026 release? I guess?

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

Ace of Spades is a smaller box (see Coke can above for scale) mostly because it’s just cards (and one giant notater for hit points).

Players use poker hands to do damage to bad guys, so the game includes a “standard” deck of cards (see the fake “worn” veneer above) with a special “Foil” ace of spades card.

There are enemies you fight along the way to the big boss. The starting enemies are simple (like the 5 hit point Mule above) …

… and the final enemy is Lord Overkill (above with 50 hit points!) And that’s the easy boss!!

How do you do damage to enemies? You play poker hands, and each poker hand has a “damage” it does! See above as the Flush does 5 points of damage, the Full House does 6 and so on. You’ll also notice that face cards (JQK) do extra +1 damage, and Aces do +3!!

Each enemy you face has an “environment” (like the one above) which describes how many poker hands you can play, and how many redraws you get. The bullets (4) are the number of poker hands you can play, and the deck arrow (4) is the number of redraws you get.

There are 11 bad guys overall on the way to Lord Overkill!! See above! If you can take all 12, you win! You lose if you can’t take out an enemy with the given number of poker hands.

If you look at the bottom of the cards of the enemies, you’ll see that killing them gets you a “one-time” or “ongoing” power you can use in later combats. For example, if you take out the Sheriff above, you get the ongoing power that Kings to do extra extra damage!

If you can make it all the way to the end and kill Lord Overkill, you win!

It’s really just playing poker hands to do damage to bad guys.

Controversy

So, I didn’t know too much about the Ace of Spades controversy until I got my copy! I got a 1st edition used from a Board Game auction from my LFGS … and it turns out the 1st edition has the controversial cards! One of them is above (the slaver) and the others … I don’t to want to show. One of them is a slave card.

If you want to know more about the controversy, see this board game geek thread. You probably want to get the 2nd edition WITHOUT the slaver, slave, and other cards. It’s the 2nd edition that came out in 2026 and that’s probably the one you want.

When I played with my friend Teresa, we just kinda put the controversial cards off to the side and didn’t play with them.

Solo Play

So, this is either a solo game or a 2-Player cooperative game. See above. Thanks for following Saunders’ Law and having a solo mode!

The solo game unfolds as you expect: you get poker hands and try to damage to your current bad guy! In the solo game, you get a full hand of 8 cards and play 5 at a time (fewer if you are playing easy mode) to play a poker hand to do damage. There are also ways to scale to make it easier and harder.

As a solo game, it was fine. The problem is that you are very dependent on the cards you get! Sure, that’s how poker is, but I found this really hard to win: it was very random. Sure, you can play smart and use the one-shot and ongoing abilities, and sure you can play the odds and get better hands. But I have yet to win a game.

And here’s the weird thing: since I know it’s kind of random and I’ll just have to do the best I can, it’s not stressful. I know that my game is completely defined by the cards I draw, and if I do great, HUZZAH! If I do poorly, oh well. I can try to play smart and I can try to think my way out, but since I know it can be very random … I don’t care? Not in a bad way but in a “Eh, that’s the way it goes”. I am going to make a controversial statement: this is a cozy game. You do the best you can, but meh, whatever.

I have played quite a number of games and haven’t won. I don’t care that I haven’t won … in a good way? It’s kinda fun.

Cooperative Play

As a 2-Player game, the game basically plays the same, but you alternate between the two players. There are still 8 cards out, but 3 are shared between the players, while each player has his own hand of 5. Here’s the thing: you have limited communication between the 2 Players. You cannot communicate what you have, except vague stuff.

I generally don’t like limited communication games; the rules are generally pretty vague except for “you can’t shared exactly what you have”. So, we probably stepped over the line a little. I think I would have preferred some limited communication rules more like The Crew (where you get a single communication per round) or something like that.

There were also no rules for sharing. To be fair, the 3 cards in the middle are shared between the two players, but it would have been nice to have other limited sharing rules.

I actually think (but I am not sure) the game would have been more fun with either some sharing or more explicit communication rules. Having said that, my favorite way to play this is 2-Player. Why? As I said before: it’s a cozy game! I am pretty sure I stuck getting what cards I get, so if I lose, whatever.

Again, calling this cozy is not necessarily a bad thing. I can sit with my friend for hours just playing and hoping we can get a good run to win! But we know the odds are against us. If we win, great! In not, oh well. That’s my definition of a cozy game: I can keep playing and not be stressed. My friend and I can hang out. Since I know the luck of the cards governs the winning, I don’t be stressed because I know I can’t do too muich about it (mostly) and I just play and have fun.

Conclusion

Play poker solo (or cooperatively with your friend ) and beat-up bad guys! It’s a simple premise, and it’s probably easy to get anyone to play it because most people know how to play poker! (Just make sure you get the 2nd Edition so you don’t offend anyone). I really like the idea that I can pull this game out for non-gamers and show them how a cooperative game works using poker hands! That’s a really neat way to introduce people to cooperative games! Most people know how poker hands work!

I also love the art in this game; it’s very comic-booky (Jonah Hex?) and very striking.

I am calling this a cozy game because I know the game is too random to take it too seriously: I will be always be at the whim of my draws, so I can lean back, play the best I can, and say “oh well” when I lose … because I will lose quite a bit. I know! With art and theme like this, how can you call this a cozy game? A cozy game for me is just sitting back and playing and saying “ok” as we play.

In the end, I prefer Ace of Spades 2-Player. It’s a cozy game where I can hang our with my friend and play a friendly (a truly friendly) game of poker. We can play all night and probably lose, but we’re still playing together and hanging out and having fun.

6.5/10 for solo play (too random to want to play all the time), but 7.5/10 or 8/10 for the 2-player game.

Appendix: Coziness vs Agency

I wonder … if we added house rules for sharing and/or communicating if I would like the game more or less? I KNOW the game is too random so I don’t care too much, that’s why it’s cozy for me … I can’t do much about how the cards come out for me and my friend, so I just say “whatever”; that makes it cozy for me. But if I added some sharing rules (“we can give one card per turn”) or communication rules (“we share show one card per turn”), maybe I would start caring more? Then maybe I would be more stressed and it wouldn’t be a cozy game anymore? Or maybe I’d like it more because I had more agency? I don’t know!