The games no-limit Texas Hold’Em. The buy in is $10,000, or alternatively an acceptable collateral. Oh and the bunny, he can’t be trusted.
Poker Night at the Inventory is the middle entry in Telltale’s unofficial poker trilogy following their experimental original title Telltale Texas Hold’Em and preceding the sequel Poker Night at the Inventory 2. Notably all three of these games have been unlisted on digital stores. The premise of the trilogy was to blend the classic card game of poker with characters who would banter and bet according to their personality.
One of the challenges of a video game based on gambling is to create meaningful stakes for the player. Poker Night at the Inventory uses a system of unlocks to encourage smarter, more conservative play. Basic in-game cosmetics such as new poker tables or different card designs for your deck can be won by collecting the $50,000 pot. Probably the most famous example of Poker Night at the Inventory’s unlocks would be the cross promotional Team Fortress 2 items gambled away by the four oppositional players. For example, Max might claim he doesn’t have the money for the buy in, instead placing down a pistol. If you knock him out of the game, the pistol is yours to keep and is transferred into your Steam account’s Team Fortress 2 inventory. This system mostly succeeds in creating tension between hands, but can be foiled by the game’s artificial intelligence. It isn’t particularly uncommon for someone to go all in on the first hand before the flop. The façade of my chip's value drops in real time as I call.
The playstyle of the four AI opponents is determined by the personality of the characters, which adds a layer of social deduction sorely missing from most poker bots. Max bets randomly making him unpredictable to play against as well as showcasing his total lack of awareness inherent to his character. The Heavy bets aggressively while Strong Bad will back out at the first sign of trouble. These variations add a liveliness to the game, distinguishing each player as unique. Further adding to the air of an authentic poker night is the game's banter, its success as dialogue more likely to work if you're already a fan of the characters original intellectual property.
As the fourth player at the table you play against Max from Sam and Max, Tycho from Penny Arcade, The Heavy from Team Fortress 2, and Strong Bad from the website Homestar Runner. Each character feels like an authentic representation transferred over to the neutral setting of the titular Inventory, an underground gaming club. In between hands or at critical moments, one or more characters may deliver dialogue directed at the player character or banter between themselves. Tycho ended up being my least favorite of the bunch, which is probably not a coincidence since I’m unfamiliar with the Penny Arcade property. The three other characters kept me well engaged for the length of their scripts which was longer than I’d expected them to be. This is a key component of the poker trilogy, to focus on a strong character driven wrapper to be draped around the card play.
At its core Poker Night at the Inventory feels like an iteration of a prototype which fails to a small extent to smooth out the experimental nature of its origins. It's disposable, as you see what it has to offer and likely enjoy your time, the novelty will end. Even after collecting what items I looked forward to winning, I still wanted to play more. Scooping a mountain of chips towards myself, can to a large extent, motivate me the same as progressing unlocks. Poker itself is a time tested game, instead it is of course the characters that wear out. The best case scenario being you like the cast you play against, the banter at some point will start to repeat. There are options to deduce dialogue frequency, but at the cost of losing the biggest appeal of the game. Noticeable effort was put into the handwritten characters to keep them authentic but I can’t help but feel like this formula may be better revisited with modern generative technology. This train of thought was the motivating factor in a 2023 retrospective. If chat and voice generative AI is up to the task of immersing me in the depths of The Inventory, it could be the iron to wrinkle out poker night.
