This might just be one of the most addicting video games I've ever played. I picked this game up to keep myself busy while waiting for something else to release in a few days, and honestly if that game didn't come out I would have really spiraled deep into Balatro. I don't think I've experienced such a passing of time since reading my favorite stories, or binge watching my favorite shows for the first time. I would start a round at a reasonable 7pm and suddenly it was 1am on a work night.

I'm still wrapping up some other soloplayer content right now but I hope to return to this funny deckbuilding roguelike very soon after. Hopefully I'll approach it in a healthier way, because dear god. Guess that scary realism should really be a testament to how good it is though.

I cannot however give it a perfect score, as much as the gameplay loop definitely deserves it and the accessibility aspect of it also does, I just feel there are a couple things this game is still missing to give it more visual replayability. Along with that, I also believe this game suffers from its soundtrack and sound effects. Most if not everyone will be muting either just the music, or the entire game very shortly into their experience with it. But gameplay loop wise, excellent. Awesome job, and I really have no issue just listening to my own music while I play it so at the end I really do not care.

I've been on and off with this game for a number of years and after my most recent binging of it, I get it. Before the game was a 8/10 for me, but only after getting into this last run do I get it. Games a 10. Let me explain this last few days.

I've been playing with friends in call, and they've seen the terrible stuff and the blessings, and there was a point during day 3 where I lost 7 our of 10 of my colony in two hours, from back to back events. Everyone was saying RIP run, and it was super demoralizing but I stuck with it. Then, an hour or so later the remaining 3 were down from an spider that began hunting one of my colonists out of base to mine steel.

Enter scene, the mysterious stranger. He came in and killed the enemy, and succeeded in bringer all three downed colonists back inside, however, one died before they could be brought back. I was down to one of my original colonists, someone I picked up along the way, and the mysterious man. HOWEVER, I don't even think 2 days in game passed when the mysterious man insulted one of my colonists, and faster than I could react he was punched and died before I could even bring him to a hospital bed. Down to two colonists. At this point, again, my friends say RIP run, start over. A part of me wanted to, but there has been so much that'd happened and me and that one original colonist had come so far, so I powered through. I clawed back from hell, I built defenses, I prepared, I captured as many wild people, enemy soldiers, and animal allies as I could, and where am I now?

On the space side of the tech tree, an extremely defensible base of operations, and 10 colonists that all tolerate one another. I'm still struggling now and then, especially when the larger raids happen, but the struggle makes it more exciting. This game is all about the struggle, about the risks and overcoming them. This game is about climbing through hell, dragging yourself from total despair, and overcoming all odds and succeeding. I actually love this game, it's a 10/10. To explain all the drama and story that happened in about 20 hours of playtime would take pages of writing, and that's awesome.