What is Push-your-luck? #
Push-your-luck is a mechanic where player are met with an often binary choice: keep their current progress, or risk it for future gains. This risk of “busting” is what often leads to the excitement and drama that makes push-your-luck an exciting mechanic. Reiner Knizia describes it well in his book Dice Games Properly Explained: “You focus on progressing and maximizing your results. But the stakes are rising. If things go wrong, you lose it all. Great risks bring great rewards - or utter defeat! Disaster strikes in many different ways. More than ever, you need to weigh up the potential gains and losses.”
What are some push-your-luck games? #
Pig #
Pig, a traditional dice game, is a prototypical example of push-your-luck.
At the start of each turn, roll a die. If the die shows any number from 2 to 6, the player adds that number to their turn total and then decides to bank their turn points to their running total or risk rolling again. If at any point the player rolls a 1, their turn ends immediately, and they score nothing for that turn. This continues with each player taking turns until one player reaches at least 100 points in their overall score, winning the game.
Unlike most of the games on this list, the chance of busting in Pig is static: always a 1/6 chance. In addition, the value of the points are straightforward as well: each point is worth 1% of your victory. This straightforward math gives Pig a fairly short shelf-life - since neither the risk nor the values are dynamic, you may find yourself bored as early as the first play. That said, its simplicity serves as a good framework to compare to other games in the genre.
Can’t Stop #
Can’t Stop, designed by Sid Sackson, is another push-your-luck dice game. While Pig has the active player rolling a single die, in Can’t Stop you roll four, and choose two pairs of dice to sum. You can have a total of three “in progress” tracks. You “bust” by having no legal moves, and you lose all of the progress you have made this turn. Once you reach the top of three tracks, you win.
From Pig, Can’t Stop is a slight step up in rules complexity and a huge step up in decision complexity. The chance of busting is a much more complicated & dynamic calculation (you can view a more comprehensive look at the calculations here). The all-or-nothing victory at each track, as well as the bell curve length of the tracks, means that the values are similarly obscured.
The fact that the math is fuzzy, but not completely opaque, gives Can’t Stop an addictive quality fitting to its name. This is an important part of push-your-luck games: if the chances are too transparent, it may be boring. If the chances are too opaque, it may be frustrating. Finding the “just right” (which will be different for different players) is what makes the game fun.
Incan Gold #
Incan Gold, designed by Alan R. Moon & Bruno Faidutti, is a great push-your-luck game if you want to explore the mechanic with a larger group.
Each round, players simultaneously decide whether to continue venturing deeper into the temple or to leave with the treasure they've collected so far. As they explore, they reveal cards that either add treasure to the pool or present hazards such as snakes, spiders, or rockslides. If two identical hazard cards appear, any players still in the temple lose all their accumulated treasure for that round. Players who decide to leave before encountering two hazards get to keep their treasure. The game is played over five rounds, and the player with the most treasure at the end wins.
The simultaneous action selection sets Incan Gold apart from the other games on this list. It accomplishes a few different things: it allows a greater number of players by many of the decisions happening in parallel. In addition, it “doubles up” on the dramatic reveal - one reveal for who is staying & going, and another for if a treasure or hazard card is drawn. It is interesting that the decision itself is just as binary as Pig - choose to either hold onto what you have, or risk it for greater rewards. The shared space, dynamic rewards, and simultaneous reveal, however, give it much greater excitement.
Deep Sea Adventure #
Deep Sea Adventure, designed by Jun & Goro Sasaki, is a small-box push-your-luck game where players play as divers with a shared oxygen supply searching for treasure.
On each turn, players roll dice to move their diver along a path of treasure tokens on the ocean floor. They can choose to pick up a treasure token or move further down to find more valuable ones. However, the more treasure a diver carries, the more oxygen from the shared supply they deplete. In addition, it reduces the speed that the player can move. If a player runs out of oxygen before returning to the submarine, they drop their treasures, which are lost for that round. The game is played over three rounds, and the player with the most valuable treasure at the end wins.
Deep Sea Adventure is unique on this list in that the “busting” mechanic is slow and insidious rather than a sudden, dramatic reveal. If you have too much treasure, your progress back to the ship starts to crawl. You may get lucky enough to roll high numbers and get back in time, but you might have three turns in a roll where you don’t move at all.
Push-your-luck as a part of a whole #
Each of the previous games have push-your-luck as the bulk of the game. There are many cases, such as the 2018 phenomena The Quacks of Quedlinburg, where the push-your-luck is just a part of a larger game. Quacks, as it is informally called, has a fairly prominent push-your-luck phase, where you pull potion ingredients and hope that the total of your white chips doesn’t exceed seven. At least as important to the game is the bag-building element, where you choose what ingredients you are going to be adding to your bag.
Push-your-luck mechanics add excitement and strategic depth to many games. Whether through the simple decisions in Pig or the complex calculations in Can’t Stop, these games challenge players to balance risk and reward.
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