All was peaceful in the idyllic land of Indines until a powerful artifact, the Belt of Beatdown, was discovered by the villainous Wardlaw O'Brien. With the belt, O'Brien was able to absorb the bar-fighting powers of the greatest fist-fighters across the world. O'Brien scheduled a world-wide pub crawl and invited all the greatest fighters in the land to take part. Can you become the greatest fist-fighter in the World of Indines by fighting your way through seven rounds, punching and gouging your way to supremacy?

At the start of 7-Card Slugfest, each player chooses one of eleven characters and takes a set of seven cards associated with that character. In each set, four cards are simple punches – doing a variable amount of damage – while three also have special effects. At the beginning of each round of the game, players shuffle their deck and place it face down in front of them. A stage card is flipped over to show the rewards for first, second and third most KO points earned this round.

When someone yells fight, the players simultaneously start picking up cards from their decks, looking at them, then playing them on another character. Whenever a player runs out of cards, they take a drink token from a common supply. Their character's stamina is ten, plus or minus the value of that drink token. When everyone has played his cards, the next step is to resolve the stacks of cards played on characters, applying damage in the order it was dealt. If a character's stamina is equalled or exceeded, the character who achieved the knockout earns a KO point. If a character survives all the punches aimed at him, then he receives the KO point. Players can also score two KO points for knocking out Boris, a non-player character. KO points are turned into gold according to each round's stage card, and the player with the most gold at the end of seven rounds wins.