Great game, and my kids love it too. I like to watch them play and they have way more hours than me on their copies.

I feel like this game is more fair than Balatro and similar. I have 100 hours in Balatro, I have a pretty high win rate, and I've cleared the highest difficulty on one of the decks. But I stopped playing Balatro because I was tired of my runs ending because I just couldn't find workable jokers. Once you've seen everything and understand the system the strategy shifts from playing hands to just finding the jokers you need which is pretty boring and one-dimensional.

...But this review is about Ballionaire, which I find much more engaging. When I lose a run I don't think, "well I just didn't get the thing I needed", instead I think about how I could have placed things differently, or how maybe I should have chosen trigger X instead of Y. Maybe I should have used more removals or maybe I should have diversified synergies a bit instead of going all in on one kind. There is a lot to explore and there are synergies that don't make obvious sense to me, which is exciting, because it means there is still a lot of the puzzle to put together.

I think Ballionaire could benefit from one feature (something that's very limiting in Balatro, but Vampire Survivors gets right): the ability to block certain choices from appearing. Blocking some choices lets you shape your run in a clearer direction. I see a fair amount of criticism for deckbuilder/roguelike games that once you start unlocking things the choice pool becomes more diluted and it becomes much harder to build synergies. I think this is a clear limitation in the genre, and the "starter packs" in Ballionaire help a bit, but I think it could also benefit from a way to narrow the choice pool directly. VS showed there are easy mechanics for blocking choices both before and during a run, although I won't pretend to have all the answers for how this should be implemented in games like Ballionaire. Game dev is hard and I respect that.

This one is a banger for sure. I have tried and refunded many games in this genre this year, but Ballionaire is a keeper.

Stay cool, Helen. I know you will.

Great game, and my kids love it too. I like to watch them play and they have way more hours than me on their copies. I feel like this game is more fair than Balatro and similar. I have 100 hours in Balatro, I have a pretty high win rate, and I've cleared the highest difficulty on one of the decks. But I stopped playing Balatro because I was tired of my runs ending because I just couldn't find workable jokers. Once you've seen everything and understand the system the strategy shifts from playing hands to just finding the jokers you need which is pretty boring and one-dimensional. ...But this review is about Ballionaire, which I find much more engaging. When I lose a run I don't think, "well I just didn't get the thing I needed", instead I think about how I could have placed things differently, or how maybe I should have chosen trigger X instead of Y. Maybe I should have used more removals or maybe I should have diversified synergies a bit instead of going all in on one kind. There is a lot to explore and there are synergies that don't make obvious sense to me, which is exciting, because it means there is still a lot of the puzzle to put together. I think Ballionaire could benefit from one feature (something that's very limiting in Balatro, but Vampire Survivors gets right): the ability to block certain choices from appearing. Blocking some choices lets you shape your run in a clearer direction. I see a fair amount of criticism for deckbuilder/roguelike games that once you start unlocking things the choice pool becomes more diluted and it becomes much harder to build synergies. I think this is a clear limitation in the genre, and the "starter packs" in Ballionaire help a bit, but I think it could also benefit from a way to narrow the choice pool directly. VS showed there are easy mechanics for blocking choices both before and during a run, although I won't pretend to have all the answers for how this should be implemented in games like Ballionaire. Game dev is hard and I respect that. This one is a banger for sure. I have tried and refunded many games in this genre this year, but Ballionaire is a keeper. Stay cool, Helen. I know you will.