this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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its a poker-themed roguelike deckbuilder. sort of like slay the spire but with playing cards. jokers give effects and theres tarot cards, planet cards, spectral cards and so on and your goal is to get more and more poker chips through chaining things together or adding effects, playing different strategies. its really fun. its rather addictive once you get going
Has "roguelike" lost all meaning now?
It's a procedurally generated perma-death deck builder, where the only thing you unlock after death are new decks (which are essentially this game's characters, of which I believe there are 10) and harder difficulties for each deck. You complete short 15-ish minute runs, where the only thing that makes the game easier is your own skill as you get better.
Sounds like a roguelike/lite to me.
You unlock other things like jokers and vouchers from doing certain things in the game as well.
On the contrary, it gained all other meanings
Haven't played this game, but it seems it fits closer to "rogue-lite"
It did the moment Rogue Legacy came out and people who've never even heard of an actual roguelike described it as a roguelike.
What does roguelike mean to you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike
If that's your definition of Rougelike then yes.
Most people understand procedural generation and permadeath to be the core features.
While many feature turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement is not typical.
It's a card game. Decks in card games are shuffled. Card games existed long before Rogue. Shuffling a deck doesn't make something "roguelike," much less procedurally generated.
It's a betting game. You lose when you're out of money. Betting games existed long before Rogue. Running out of money doesn't make something "roguelike."
It's just poker with extra shit in it.
I like roguelikes and deckbuilders, and I LOVE slay the spire but I'm pretty ambivalent on poker. I've had my eye on this but is it just "poker but a little quirky" or would it be worth my time as a non poker fan?
I love STS and I've played ~6h of Balatro.
It isn't clicking with me like STS did. STS has tons of flavour and variety, but Balatro's main flavour is "poker" with some surrealism on top. The gameplay mostly has you staring at poker cards and thinking about how to stack point multipliers with jokers. It felt pretty monotonous to me after a while.
Balatro is definitely fun and worth its price. Give it a shot if you like STS. I just don't think it's the second coming of STS like a lot of people have been saying.
I've never played a single game of poker IRL and I have 50+ hours in Balatro. It's good.
ive never played poker in my life and i love it