I played a bunch of the latest indie sensation last night. It's a roguelike deck-builder on the surface, but the secret is that, much like Vampire Survivors, this is a clicker game in disguise. Your only goal is to make the number go up as fast as possible. Building the rube goldberg machine that makes this happen isn't completely uninteresting, but the number of manual actions that you need to take which don't correspond to meaningful decisions but do have exponentially large numerical results makes me really suspicious of the entire premise.

The possibility space here is small enough that writing a bot to play Balatro would be more fun than playing Balatro. Between this realization and the one I had a couple weeks ago—that life is too short to play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth—I find myself wanting to investigate Final Fantasy XII's battle-automating gambit system more than ever.

I decided to pick this up and try it out, since it is cheap and felt like it could scratch that Dicey Dungeons itch. It's interesting, but it feels like you're just trying to get enough multipliers / power-ups to make up for the fact that Poker is a super random game at the end of the day. And yeah, randomness is part of roguelikes, but in turn-based roguelikes with only a handful (no pun intended) of possible ways to get points, the randomness can really F you.

I think another thing that makes it not as interesting as Dicey Dungeons to me is that every round essentially feels the same. There are a few "boss" rounds with unique rules to them, but for the most part it's just look at your cards, decide if you're going for matches or a straight, and then discard some cards and hope for the rest. Nothing really changes much hand to hand, round to round.

Still, as S_T says it is interesting to build the machine. And it feels nice when you do get that perfect hand for the machine that you have built and you watch those multipliers adding up.

I kinda fell off this one after a week or so. I quite liked it before that! But then it just felt like going through the motions. I think it didn't "hide its mechanics" (for lack of a better term) as well as stuff like Slay the Spire and Dicey Dungeons. Plus, my strategic options felt a lot more limited; due to the nature of the game and of poker, it felt like going for Flushes and x2s was the optimal strategy. And the inherent limitation of the number of Jokers you hold necessarily means the only way to get stronger is by "leveling up" your Zodiac cards, which can get grindy.

In short, I'm scratching my head over how this got nominated for GOTY in The Game Awards. But The Game Awards is pretty dumb, so...

@TriforceBun

I'm not even going to skim The Game Awards this year. What a waste.

Secret_Tunnel said:

@TriforceBun

I'm not even going to skim The Game Awards this year. What a waste.

What, you don't want seven instances Geoff Keighley hyping up a world-changing reveal before cutting to a CGI scene from some generic-looking upcoming adventure?

@TriforceBun

What sticks out to me even more are the 1.5 hours of ads for free-to-play MOBAs and Korean MMOs. It's like getting an annual peek at this alternate reality.

I think for the game industry to grow up, it needs to recognize that not all computer programs with user I/O are the same art form. We have one award show for Best eSports Commentator, Best Cozy Game for Healing Trauma, and Best RPG (Not Counting Octopath Traveler). These are very different things that appeal to very different audiences! It's no wonder three hours of this is a bore.

Mario Party Jamboree has more in common with Exploding Kittens than it does with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. If everything under the sun counts as a video game, why aren't X and ChatGPT nominated?

I'm really enjoying this one! Dicey Dungeons is probably a bit more involved but it has been fun discovering the 150 different Jokers and other mechanics that can possibly be involved in your run. The different decks you start with add some variety too. This one might be more of a flash in the pan kind of experience, but the initial flash is VERY bright for me.

I think the fact that this game runs well on mobile and any platforms, with easy in and out, just makes it so irresistible to a lot of folks. Even if you don't dedicate a ton of time to it, it'll always be there asking you to make that Rube Goldberg machine ever so sweeter.

In my last run I used the Blueprint joker to essentially duplicate my other joker which had the ability to add an Xmultiplier on cards of a certain type. I managed to net over 1,000,000 points in a single Flush hand. It was exhilarating to pull off and I know it's far from the best kind of thing out there (but sure to win the basic decks and difficulty).

I'm digging this a lot. Who knows how long for, but I'm digging it.

As for the Game Awards, every year I do watch them but I watch them late so I can intentionally just scrub past all the ads I don't want to see or lame reveals they have.

TriforceBun said:

What, you don't want seven instances Geoff Keighley hyping up a world-changing reveal before cutting to a CGI scene from some generic-looking upcoming adventure?

Exactly. Easy to skip when you have a delayed start. There are so many of those kinds of reveals. It's a bummer.

I just hope that developers actually get to speak when they win this year.

I love Balatro. I don't necessarily play it for its depth, but for its vibes, and I think the random nature of it just adds to that. Which isn't to say it doesn't have depth, just that it's not the primary appeal for me. I played Slay the Spire and Dicey Dungeons a lot when I first got them (and Wildfrost right now), but it's Balatro that I keep coming back to.