Peter Hayward is on a roll. This year alone he’s released Converge and Things in Rings, and now he’s enabling my lifelong dream of cheating at cards in Las Vegas (and getting away with it, obv). Vegas Strip offers all the glitz and false glamour of its titular location, plus the satisfaction of thieving from the biggest and most legalized thieves of them all. It’s a real hoot.

You can smell the cigarette smoke from here.

Welcome to Vegas. You’ve come to town to rob the house. Five to six houses, all lined up in a convenient neon row.

To pull off this series of heists, you’ll be cheating at cards. The rules of the game are dead simple. Each round sees you and everybody else at the table selecting one casino to rig and another to leave untouched.

Naturally, no robbery is complete without a series of hurdles, catches, and rubs. The first conundrum in Vegas Strip is that you’re competing against your fellow rounders to rake in the most cash. Everybody distributes chips — chunky clacky things — to indicate their relative strength at each casino. There are a few particulars to this process. You can only have two chips per casino, better to prevent the house from noticing your clandestine activities. You can’t tie with the leader, forcing caution with each placement. Also, no placing your ultra-powerful black chip at the casino you’ve marked for the cheat. That would be too obvious.

Also, each casino has its own house rule, randomized at the start of each session. Maybe the Sunken Treasure only permits five chips in total, preventing everybody from piling on. Maybe the Gold Rush only lets there be one chip of each number, causing little bottlenecks as everybody tries to slip in the right chips for the job. These modifiers are the secret lifeblood of the game, bestowing each casino with its own essential textures. One house rule prevents the current leader from adding a second chip, locking that casino into testy contests for dominance.

And we haven’t talked about the payoff yet. Because your goal isn’t strictly to win, not always. If a casino is rigged, winning is a good thing, letting you take its entire pot. But if a casino is clean, then whichever player comes in first will instead be ejected from the premises and everybody else wins in their stead.

Except Hayward handles even these second-placers with clever grace. Rather than splitting the casino’s pot, everybody’s payout is equal to the number they wagered on that casino. So your goal is to win at dirty casinos and not win at clean ones, but still rank as high as possible when not getting kicked out. It’s a delicate balance.

Hmm… which casino to Ocean’s Eleven today?

This being a Peter Hayward game, Vegas Strip is also deeply funny, although its humor might go missing at first glance. Whether you’re playing on your own or operating as part of a team — which the game defaults to once there are enough players — every operator in the world has converged on Vegas for a single cheating spree. Thanks to each casino’s chip limits, you’ll be playing pretty much every house, entirely aware that some are loaded and others aren’t, but not quite sure which is which. The entire Strip is a minefield of trampolines, and you’re bound to hurtle into somebody else’s stomping grounds before too long.

Of course, this also raises the stakes of each play. When somebody places a chip in a particular location, they’re communicating something to the table, whether intentionally or otherwise. The surest signal arrives when somebody plays their black chip — at least you know they aren’t cheating at that specific destination. Instead, perhaps they just locked down somebody else’s dirty take, ensuring a solid payday for themselves at a fellow rounder’s expense. Indeed, that’s very much the point. If you can guess where somebody is cheating, you can swoop in and steal away their pot.

Like the best comedic games, Vegas Strip doesn’t overstay its welcome. A full session is kept to a trim three rounds, which occupies maybe a little more than half an hour. Any longer and the game might take itself too seriously. Instead, it’s lighthearted and silly.

For instance, Vegas Strip is one of those games that I happen to be incredibly bad at. Every time I’ve played could have been confused with a competition for golf score. What keeps me coming back is that same lightness of place. It isn’t substantial — although it’s crunchier than Things in Rings, it definitely requires less horsepower than Converge, That Time You Killed Me, or even Fiction. If I had to gauge it on density, I’d put it in the same weight class as cotton candy. Too many mouthfuls would result in a stomach ache. Fortunately, Hayward knows better than to shove a whole pound of the stuff down your gullet.

I want to dress like a Vegas backroom man.

In the end, Vegas Strip is a pleasant filler game, with none of the shade tabletop connoisseurs often reserve for the label. This is my third-favorite Hayward game I’ve played this year — and in a surprise twist worthy of a gambler flick, that’s a positive.

Vegas Strip, along with three other titles from Allplay, launches on Kickstarter tomorrow.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi.)

A prototoype copy was provided.