I don't think one simply stops playing Balatro, but I've beaten the game with every deck and had a win on gold difficulty, so I feel qualified to review it now. Balatro is very fun and incredibly addictive, but is it the best deckbuilder roguelike? Well... maybe. While this game is very good, I don't quite think it's the second coming of the messiah as many others seem to.

The great deckbuilder roguelikes before Balatro have all been enriched by sort of being two games in one. In something like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, you have the strategic element of building your deck and the tactical element of actually playing with the deck you've made, but I find that the tactical element of Balatro is a bit lacking. At it's best, playing a blind in Balatro consists of milling your hand until you hit the one or two hand types you've based your build around, and at worst with some joker combinations it barely even matters what you actually play.

This lack of moment-to-moment tactical depth leads to a couple of issues for me. In most great Roguelikes (specifically thinking of The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon here but it applies to deckbuilders too), you supplement shortfalls on a strategic front with player skill. That is to say, it's perfectly possible to beat Enter the Gungeon with a mediocre loadout if you just 'git gud' at using the tools at your disposal. This isn't a theme at all in Balatro; if you don't happen to get some good jokers by, say, ante 3, then that run is just dead and no level of player skill is going to fix that. This can make the game feel very frustrating at times; if you just roll badly when it comes to your first few jokers, there really isn't much you can do about it except sigh and hold the reset button.

The lack of a tactical side in Balatro also makes the game feel a bit brainless at times; while I greatly enjoy this game, it often feels like I'm enjoying it more on the level of something like Vampire Survivors or Cookie Clicker. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy both of those idle games greatly, but I don't like having to compare Balatro to them because Balatro feels like it could be so much more. I think the lack of context doesn't help with this gamefeel either; while the theming in Monster Train is kinda weird and cringey, it feels more tactile to actually be fighting against something rather than just have a raw number go up as in Balatro.

But all that said, this is absolutely not intended to be a negative review, because the strategic side of gameplay in Balatro is fantastic. There are so many different ways to break this game; I'm 50+ hours in and still finding new uses for jokers that I never would have dreamed of. Despite there being almost 200 jokers, none (or at least barely any) of them feel objectively bad or useless; some jokers are niche but powerful, some are only of value in the early game, but every card in here has its place. The game is also excellent at sprinkling little rewards throughout; most of the jokers are unlocked through side objectives rather than just for beating the game, and going for these extra goals can make you play in a completely different way, and it always feels like you are achieving something. Add on top of that the challenges, the many different deck types and the many different ways you can augment a run outside of jokers, and there really is just an obscene amount of content and replayability in here.

The game feels really good too... I'd compare it to Vampire Survivors again (this time in a good way) in terms of how great it is at using visuals and sound design to keep your lizard brain as happy as it can possibly be. And while I discussed downsides of the overall theming earlier, it really is great at both making this both stand out and be accessible. There's no big walls of text to read on your playing cards, it's just the standard pack of 52 that everybody knows, and you score using standard poker hands. Anyone familiar with poker will need no time to understand how to play this, and even if you aren't familiar it won't take long because everything in this game is very clear and presented upfront to the player. Balatro could definitely do with some more music though; the one song in the game is pretty good, but man do you get tired of it after 20+ hours of playtime, thank god for the mute button.

So in short yes, Balatro good. Balatro very good. I don't think it's the new undisputed champion of deckbuilding roguelikes as a genre and, while I don't think it would take much tweaking for it to become that champion, I don't think that's the niche that Balatro is looking to fill. It's probably better to think of Balatro as it's own thing... Balatro is to deckbuilders what Vampire Survivors is to bullet hells, a spin on the formula that completely changes the gameplay and gamefeel, opening it up to a whole new audience without alienating prior fans of the genre. And viewed through this lens, Balatro could hardly be any better.

I think this is an absolutely beautiful game, both in terms of narrative and theming, and also literally at times with its grand, moody and otherworldly aesthetic. It poses a lot of questions about the creative process, from the angles of developers, curators and consumers, and seems more interested in provoking debate than giving answers. I've seen reviews suggesting that this comes off as heavy-handed which I don't think I agree with, not least because I'm not even sure what the author's final statement even is besides 'conflicted'.

It's kinda hard to describe what this even is, besides something as reductive as 'walking sim'; which I guess it technically is. It's presented as if it was a narrated expedition through a bunch of smaller experiences which, again, it is, but I promise it gets more interesting and appealing as it goes on. You could also describe it as pretentious, and you wouldn't be incorrect, but it deals with topics that I don't think are possible to deal with in an unpretentious way; if anything, Beginner's Guide came off as relatively well-grounded to me given the loftiness of its theses.

But whatever this game is, something here spoke to me. And I do think this is a must-play for anyone interested in video games as an art form, as it does give some fascinating new perspectives from that angle that I had never considered before. It's not going to rock your world, its very short with no gameplay to speak of, but it might just change the way you look at it. And I think that in itself is something to be celebrated.

This game is, on paper, very much not for me. It's very twee, very low-stakes, and chock full of cute animals and magical creatures; all things I do not get on with at all in video games. But my god does Stardew Valley absolutely nail what it's going for. This game is an absolute masterpiece in terms of pacing. There are so many secrets and unlockables spread across the map, never so prominent as to make the game feel focussed on solving mysteries but always present enough to keep you playing to find out what you'll discover next.

But that's just the first hook that this game casts to keep you on the line, because before long you'll be spending multiple in-game days in the mines looking for some rare resource to help you slightly increase your crop watering efficiency. And the desire to increase efficiency became just as strong for me as the desire to complete the game's various quests.

The game does a remarkable job of making you feel time pressure that doesn't exist. The shipping crate mechanic that adds a 1-day delay to the majority of your income actually makes the day/night cycle meaningful (unlike in something like Spiritfarer where it seemed gratuitous and needlessly flow-breaking). And the knowledge that running out of health, energy or time on a given day incurs steep costs encourages you to plan out each day in detail... and then plan out the whole week to make sure you can complete your help wanted quests on time... and then plan out each season in detail when you realize all your crops need changing at season's end, and so on and so on in a never-ending spiral. It feels like everything here is designed to be as cripplingly addictive and just-one-more-day-ish as possible, and I can't tell how much of my eventual love for the game is just Stockholm Syndrome at this point...

One thing I will criticize is the start of the game, which is not at all good at getting you on board; you pretty much get dumped in the intimidatingly large town with nothing but a few parnsip seeds and are told to just get on with it, and this hurdle took me a couple of tries to get over. There's also quite a lot of info that you need but can't get in game (e.g. where do I buy some particular crop, where does this particular villager spend their afternoon on Wednesday, etc), which inevitably pushes one towards spending a lot of time on one of the Stardew wikis... which in turn will end up ruining some of the mysteries that formed the foundation of the spiral of addiction I described before.

But yeah, Stardew is very very good at doing what it does. I think it might secretly be an alien mind parasite in disguise, but its one I don't mind having.

...what even are you, Cruelty Squad? The game so perfectly sits on the border between shitpost and masterpiece, intelligent and crass, insightful and parodic. There are so many things objectively wrong with this game, and yet they all feel deliberate; either to seep the repulsive game world in yet another layer of bile, or just to fuck with the player. This design philosophy makes it very difficult to review, because the shortcomings are mostly intentional and also somehow mostly add to the experience.

There's a lot of layers to this one. On the top layer there's the sheer noise of this game's aesthetic; the game is, of course, aggressively ugly and the soundtrack will drive you mad if listened to in more than small doses. Below that there's a perfectly functional tactical shooter, where you advance carefully through some honestly excellently designed levels to try and take out your targets before the guards spot you first. And below that layer, the game encourages you to speedrun it; find a route, memorise enemy placements, and it makes you feel like a god when pulling off a good run. The weapon and implants you can choose from at the start of each mission are deceptively varied, and there are so many approaches you can take in most levels. The level of player freedom is staggering.

The core gameplay is all executed much better than you would initially expect from a game that, y'know, looks and sounds like this... but if you play for long enough, you will trip and fall down a rabbithole into just the most bizarre drug-trip nightmare. The world of Cruelty Squad is nihilistic, spiteful, psychedelic, and gets more and more insane as you descend into it's rotten hypercapitalist core. It really is unlike anything else I have ever played, and I am absolutely here for it.

But yes, I can totally understand why the top layer of 'its ugly, weird and deliberately broken' could be a dealbreaker for some; everyone has their limits. There were a couple of levels I found genuinely unpleasant to play (and not in the way the game is aiming for... Darkworld and Archon Grid can go fuck themselves), and the game very much feels balanced around its later levels which can make the early game feel a bit all over the place in terms of difficulty.

But y'know what? I love you, Cruelty Squad. I don't feel I can give it full marks because of... well, everything. But I adore games that aren't afraid to be weird, and this is one of the weirdest. A hearty recommend despite the fact I reckon 9/10 people would justifiably hate this.

I love this game! The puzzles aren't necessarily the most original, there isn't any kind of central gimmick to base them around like in something like Portal or Swapper, but the setting and tone absolutely carry this one for me.

From the title, you'd be forgiven for thinking this game is going to be pretentious nonsense, but... well, it is pretentious. Undeniably so. But it frontloads its intentions and tones (you literally wake up in a Roman ruin at the start of the game with an Abrahamic god-like figure issuing commandments), and even the loftiest philosophical discussions feel perfectly at home here. Talos Principle also still finds ways to come off as softer and more human in places. For every text log with a quote from some ancient Greek philosopher, you'll find an email from someone facing some problem and it gives great emotional insight on characters you will never meet (can't elaborate much more here without spoilers...). There even manages to be humour at times in the text and audio logs. One slight tonal misstep imo was the decision to fill the world with memey easter eggs; it always took me out of the moment when I was exploring this incredibly heavy-hearted game and found a silly Serious Sam reference in some dark corner of the map. But in general, the game pulls off an incredibly powerful elegiac tone throughout, and I don't know of any other game that evokes that kind of atmosphere so strongly.

This tone is also in no small part helped along by the minimalist but honestly perfect music and the beautiful setting. The game is set in a series of deliberately grandiose ancient ruins, and the stark contrast between these and the techno-futurist elements that make up each puzzle really help give the world a unique feel. One minor nitpick on the aesthetics would be the sound design for some of the puzzle elements; everything makes a distinct and obvious sound, meaning you can get some idea of what's happening without even looking, but the constant rattles and clunks can get pretty annoying when playing puzzles that involve things happening in a loop.

In terms of gameplay the puzzles are /generally/ aimed perfectly in terms of difficulty. There is a nice gentle difficulty curve with the game unlocking more features as you go and gradually exploring every way they interact, but the puzzles towards the end really do get bloody tricky. There are a couple of late game puzzles I have issues with; there's one where you have to find a way to smuggle items into it from outside (which feels strange as most puzzles in the game are very self-contained), and one of the endgame puzzles is set in an area so large that I got stuck for a while simply because I couldn't see the things I needed to interact with. The bonus stars you can unlock are more of a mixed bag; an awful lot of them involve either glitching your way out of bounds or trying to find one specific thing somewhere in a massive visually noisy level, so I felt no shame in using hints for a lot of these...

Overall though, I had a fantastic (albeit somewhat existential) time with this one, and it absolutely still stands up 9 years after it came out.