I see what the creator of Balatro meant: this pachinko roguelike’s Steam Next Fest demo is dangerously hard to put down

When the creator of roguelike hit Balatro emphatically recommends a roguelike in Steam Next Fest, you’ve at least gotta check it out. Not knowing what to expect, I gave Ballionaire a quick download and then, whoops, 20 minutes passed in a blink. I should probably get some work done, I thought. And then I played more of the Ballionaire demo. Now here I am, spreading my affliction with minutes left in my work day.

Ballionaire is a pachinko roguelike about building the wackiest Rube Goldberg machine you can in order to make as much money as possible and meet increasing cash thresholds. So far, each round starts with just one plain dropped ball, but as that ball triggers and collides with the gadgets and bumpers and bonkers and other absurdities you place on the board, that can quickly become an army of balls. Gold balls, flame balls, water balls, anti-gravity balls – it’s all balls down here. 

After each round, you get a roguelike draft for passive boons and/or new bonkers to put on the board, slowly assembling a path for your all-important balls. The thing is, this is pachinko, one of the purest games of chance around. All you’re really doing is constructing an ideal path. Sure, your ball might bounce off this to trigger this to spawn that which will double that and reset that and fly into that. But your ball could also go sailing into an abyss of nothingness that you created by foolishly concentrating all your high-value bonkers too low on the board. Not that I would know. 

This is some of the highest praise I can give a roguelike: it takes about 11 seconds to learn how Ballionaire works, and it is dangerously easy to just keep playing. The sights! The sounds! The numbers. Look at that pachinko ball go. The pings and bonks and ka-chings and honks are a spirited chorus to the dream run for the little ball that could, generating twice your next cash target in a single drop. Developer newobject is bang-on: this is “brain-tickling fun.” 

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