After a lot of tries, J more or less soloed Annihilation to complete our second Remnant II playthrough. Great game.


Last year's big deckbuilder roguelike was Balatro, yesterday I finally got around to playing it. It's like Slay the Spire but with poker hands instead of combat.

Quick summary:

• You start with a normal 52-card deck and modify it throughout the roguelike run. Card removal isn't as common as other deckbuilders, mainly you add scoring bonuses and change card suit or value.
• Despite the use of poker hands, it's not poker; each round/battle is simply about trying to achieve an escalating score target by playing a few hands. The score from each hand is based on the card values, poker hand value, and multiplier effects. (The game is briefly confusing because it repurposes poker terms for game mechanics.)
• Your hand size is in the 7+ range and you typically keep cards you don't play in hand.
• Every third battle is against a boss who debuffs you in some way, e g. diamonds don't score or your first draw is face-down.
• There are persistent bonuses, consumable items, and currency that let you min/max your build, e.g. targeting a couple poker hands or suits.

I really enjoyed my first few runs. I might fire it back up when I want to game but don't have a ton of time, but ultimately the combat mechanic is fairly limiting. That is, there are only a few poker hands to begin with, each run the viable plays quickly narrow to one or two. So you just end up playing, say, flush after flush. I think, I've only played a few times.

While there are a couple flavors of boring consumables that just provide flat stat buffs, the equippable items allow for excellent build variety.

I guess the devs got some other publishers on board with cross-branded card sets. Awesome.

Me and J had Roboquest on the back burner for quite some time on account of matchmaking not working (I don't recall if it was a Steam Deck or crossplay issue). Something got fixed and now we can be brobots.

I haven't played enough to say anything substantive about the game, but some early takes:

• It's Gunfire Reborn but with robots
• The progression/unlocking has some sort of story attached
• The music is rad

Wake me when you need me.

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