Using poker as the mechanics of a game is one of those ideas that people come up with a lot. In my opinion this is the best execution of that idea. The promise of a poker based game is that poker has relatively simple mechanics that everyone knows so putting a twist on that will be easy for most people to figure out. In execution this has been difficult because it either ends up not being a meaningful enough escalation on poker or escalates in a way that removes the promised simplicity. Balatro is the first time that they hit that perfect sweet spot that maintains the simplicity and gives me a reason not to just play poker or a poker simulator.

I got this in the humble choice bundle and kinda wish that it had been one of the choice games I inevitably forget to ever play. By the end of this game I was only holding out so that when I said this game was bad no one could ever try to tell me that actually the ending makes it good (which it doesn't.) Most of the puzzles are pretty divorced from the story. There are a lot of times that the game wants an inventory puzzle solved in a specific way and doesn't do a great job conveying their logic. The color pallet of the game fails to integrate into the magic singing system; there are a lot plants that are the color of one of the songs that aren't effected by the songs. The fairytaleish plot was pretty bad. I feel like it doesn't think about the setting enough to work on a literal level and doesn't think about theme enough to work on a conceptual level. Wasted way too much of my time on this game.