Games of chance have a long history across different cultures in the early modern period, yet in Bologna they take on specific visual formats that are closely tied to the city and its politics, as well as to the Counter-Reformation morality of the day, illustrated via humorous satire. The seventeenth-century artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1638–1718) makes use of the broadsheet format to create games that blend elements of both high and low culture, confirming the complex multivalent nature of both the games and their reception by the Bolognese audience. These games create a type of theater of the world and a microcosm of the piazza, where role reversals and changes of fortune are common across all classes and professions. This essay will focus on the meaning and use of certain key themes that weave throughout Mitelli's games: these include aspects of the world upside down (a familiar trope in the early modern world), the importance of food and the sin of gluttony (one of the seven deadly sins), and the morals of women, all contributing factors/facets of a local identity as expressed in the popular verses of the day and set against a backdrop of Church reform. In a Papal State such as Bologna, these game prints can serve as testimony of a culture deeply rooted in the visual display of both popular folklore and religion.