Another set of games down, one is a game that I'm done with entirely, and the other is a game that I think I will never be done with, but am so many hours down this path that I think it's done. Balatro I'm still playing, but I'm far enough in at this point that I don't think there's going to be much 'new' so much as just getting better or getting luckier. Tangle Tower actually has a narrative end, so I've completed that one fully. I've played both games on Steam (though both are on Nintendo Switch and other platforms as well), and Jaymo and I talked about Balatro on Lite Switch: March 22, 2024 and Tangle Tower on Lite Switch: April 5, 2024.
Balatro
Balatro is one of the rarer cases of me picking up a game when it's quite new. This first released in February, and I got on this pretty quickly. I like poker, and I like games centered on deck mechanics in one fashion or another (from tabletop stuff like Magic: The Gathering and Trains to digital stuff like Scrolls and Faeria). So Balatro really caught my attention as a roguelike poker game. I'm still not anywhere close to having this game 100% done, but I don't think that point will ever come. I am, however, 75 hours in, and still enjoying this.
The basic structure of the game is that you keep facing sets of blinds, a small blind, a big blind, and a boss blind. For the first two, you either have the option to skip the blind (and have some sort of perk... some are more useful than others) or play the blind. To beat it, you have to score a certain number of chips (tied to the hands you play) with a limited number of hands and discards. The boss blinds can't be skipped, and will have some extra challenge like spades don't count or you get dealt cards face down. Get past the boss blind, and the antes go up, so you need more chips to clear each round. Complete the 8th ante and you've reached the 'end' of a run and have the option to continue on in endless mode or go start another run. Do the right things along the way, and you'll have unlocked new cards and decks to use.
What I like about Balatro is how this starts to really allow you to bend the boundaries of regular poker. One of the big ways it does this is through jokers. These are not part of the regular 52 card deck you start with, but you can pick them up during a run and they stay out the whole time. And they can allow for some really fun interactions. For example, I got hold of a card that meant I could complete a flush with only 4 cards instead of 5. What I didn't count on, but appreciate, is that means I can play 5 cards where 4 are the same suit, and 4 are sequential, and the game counts that as a straight flush even though I'm using a different subset of cards to get the straight and the flush. That feels like the sort of thing the game should reward, and it does.
Most of the game, though, is more about the losing than it is about the winning. I got very used to seeing the game over screen. A lot of that is because I don't think every run can be won. There's a solid element of luck here as it relates to the cards you get and the opportunities that they provide. One of the biggest tricks to this game is realizing how the antes increase. It's pretty easy to win the first couple rounds usually, but the antes are increasing exponentially, not linearly. What that means in gameplay terms is that this game heavily relies upon the multipliers, and getting those to increase quickly. It means that the strategies that work for the first few antes won't always be strategies that will work later on, and it requires being willing to abandon a strategy, even a working one, if it won't scale well enough to last for the later antes. It also creates a lot of "high risk, high reward" scenarios.
The collection really highlights just how many options there are... with consumable cards that have special powers themed as tarot cards, planet cards, and spectral cards, plus the jokers, the various decks, the vouchers you can buy for extra benefits during a run, the different blinds to defeat, the modifications to the regular playing cards (seals and editions), and the different perks from skipping a blind (the tags), there's a whole bunch of stuff to 'unlock' and identify and that really appeals to my "gotta catch em all" collector's brain. 75 hours in, and I've gotten all of those groups completed, except for the decks (I have to beat the game on harder difficulties to get the last two) and about 5 jokers. I haven't unlocked 2 of them (meaning there's something I still have to do in game), and the others I've unlocked, but I haven't found them during the game yet. to add to my collection. My big goal here is to at least keep playing until I've got the entire collection, even though I don't expect to ever 100% the achievements on Balatro. We'll see if I can manage that before I hit 100 hours in game, but it's going to be tough. The last two are really challenging, but I'm still having fun trying to get them.
The whole thing has made Balatro incredibly addicting, and incredibly fun. And by turning off the sound, it's made for a really good game to play while watching TV or listening to podcasts.
Tangle Tower
Tangle Tower's name doesn't make it clear, but this is, roughly, the second game in a franchise from SFB Games. The "original" game was actually a Flash game (remember Flash? Those were the days) in 2007 that ended up on Newgrounds, as all Flash games did in that era. But as far as a self-contained game, the first was Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp in 2014. Though if you're looking for it on Steam, it's listed there as just Detective Grimoire, and I played this on Steam back in 2016. I dug it then, and was clearly on the right track in saying "I'm also really intrigued by what may be potential follow-up games for it", as Tangle Tower would then come out in 2019. Right on track, I'm getting to it 5 years later (though the game's 'only' been sitting in my Steam library since 2022). For the curious, this took about 6 hours to 100%, with a couple achievements that were technically missable but because I was exploring everything I wasn't going to miss.
The core premise here is that you play Detective Grimoire (or really, it's the investigative unit of Detective Grimoire and his associate Sally, as your game inputs can result in either of them doing something, or triggering interactions between them), and you've just arrived on a very small, weird island to solve a murder. There's a body, there's a clear wound, but there's no sign of a murder weapon if one doesn't count the painting that the murder victim was working on when she was killed. And all of this is taking place in Tangle Tower, the single, eccentric mansion that was originally the domain of the Remingtons, but now has two towers attached to it, one the domain of the Fellows and the other the domain of the Pointers, the family names that had married in to the Remington family. And there's a solid sense of combativeness between the two wings of the extended family. It's not a surprise that it does that, but it does it well.
The biggest mechanic of this game is the point-and-click nature of this as you go from setting to setting, and then when you find items this way taking them back to all the suspects and having them talk about it. And one of the things that Tangle Tower has going for it is how much personality come from the characters, and how Grimoire and Sally have something to say for just about everything you click on. I've played other games where when you start doing this, you just get a lot of "there's nothing interesting there" sort of lines, but here, if you can click on it, it's going to generally be distinct dialogue that is also well-voiced. The screenshot here, of course, is when a "It's quiet" setup didn't work the way Grimoire wanted it to, and that's just a sort of humor that I appreciate that is a bit silly bit also willing to play on some tropes. For this kind of game, a lot of the value comes from all this interaction and that there's scripted bits for everything. I do also appreciate that when you are talking to suspects, it shows which things you've already asked them about, so it's really easy to make sure that you've asked everyone about everything.
The game does also have puzzles scattered through here, and it may not be what everyone is after, but for me I found the puzzles relaxing. I don't think any of the puzzles were anything that I felt were particularly difficult, and I've absolutely played games that have had tougher puzzles (tangentially, I've written Python code to solve a puzzle in a game before when I thought it was too hard). So these tended to not take too much time for me, and so they were just fun breaks from the story. Though puzzles are very much in my wheelhouse so maybe this would be a barrier to some people, but I don't think any of these would be deal breakers for most people.
There is one particular part of this game that has really just stuck with me well beyond finishing the game, though. And it's not the solution of the murder, nor is it the deeper mysteries of Tangle Tower that starts to explore (even though some of those are absolutely themes that I dig in games). It's the depth of character. Or perhaps more particularly, it's the depth of character present in Fifi. She's a character that really struggles in interacting with others, and so she has clung to the people she can interact with and has a bit of fear of change that might jeopardize that. More than that, though, this delves into how she really doesn't know how to deal with subjective issues or things that are open to interpretation, including how she has a very strained relationship with her own mother because she simply doesn't know how to handle the non-verbal communication.
The whole thing is incredibly relatable; I looked around a bit and can't find anything confirming it, but I would not be at all surprised if Fifi was expressly designed to be autistic. If she's not, she's still a character absolutely in that mold and the more dialogue there was with her, the more relatable she was for me. To the point that this is one of the strongest instances I've had of seeing myself in a character in quite some time. That's not just about characters in video games, but characters period. Intentional or not, they did a really great job of having a character that feels very relatably autistic to me, and in a way that captures both the strengths and weaknesses of that. Maybe I've got a bias in that assessment as a socially awkward scientist.
The nice epilogue to Tangle Tower for me is that after playing it, I saw that the Detective Grimoire franchise is actually about to get another entry, as The Mermaid Mask (which appears to have been The Mermaid's Tongue until recently as well?) is supposed to be released this year and already has a demo up on Steam (it's been there since December 2023). For me, though, I'm not even bothering with the demo... I liked Detective Grimoire, I loved Tangle Tower, and so I'm ready to go for The Mermaid Mask as soon as that game is released as well.
Recap
Balatro is a great game for fitting in wherever you have time or the ability to split your attention between things, and it can be very satisfying when a string of bonuses are lined up nicely. It's a great demonstration of how a solid game really just needs one basic concept as the foundation. It's one of the best values I've had in terms of game play vs amount I spent.
Tangle Tower is a great narrative with a lot of engaging characters and a very charming sort of humour that is worked in to all the dialogue (and all voiced dialogue). With a sequel game coming soon, now is a great time to get caught up on the adventures of Detective Grimoire as prep for The Mermaid Mask.
These have been two solid games, and they're both available on Nintendo Switch, Steam, and most of the other modern options for getting games. So they're easy to find and worth the time (though Balatro may consume a whole lot of time if you let it). Game on, everyone.
