Combolands: Roguelike Citybuilder

Really fun roguelike. Has lots of charm and feels super polished. This game also has some really innovative elements, if you're worried about it just being another Balatro-esque. Worked very well out of the box for me with Proton on a low spec laptop.

Seriously surprised by the quality and depth of this game. It's not a deckbuilder, but it has a Balatro-like feel in that you have a point total to reach every round, and you're looking for synergies that are going to scale up, drastically if possible. At the start of a run, you choose two "guilds" which essentially determine the pool of buildings that are going to appear this run (there are various ways to get buildings from other guilds to appear as well). Different buildings earn points or resources depending on different trigger conditions, and buildings or map features around them. You're looking for ways for buildings to make lots of points, trigger often, etc, but additional resources and mechanics can add quite a bit of variety to this. It has most features you expect from this type of game (shop between rounds, various consumables, held items that change rules and can be sold for money), all varied and well-implemented. I will say the game does not seem to have a gigantic amount of content - completing a run is relatively easy even on some of the harder difficulty levels (I'm up to 7/10 and it's actually getting difficult), is not very long and every run is usually going to level up at least one of your guilds and unlock something or other. It's quite satisfying, but after about 8 hours I've unlocked probably 60-70% of the content, so less than 8 hours to go until I've unlocked everything. That said, there are some guild combinations I've still never tried (and some of them probably need some messing around to master) and probably plenty of fun runs to be had even after unlocking all the content, so that's not to say the game is empty. Unlocking everything just doesn't seem to have quite the challenge of a Slay the Spire or Balatro. But as someone who usually gives up on games that require an absurd amount of optimisation or luck, I actually like the level of difficulty here.

giving this the highest honor i can bestow: when i can't sleep, i start imagining synergies and builds i want to try next time i play i feel like i've barely scratched the surface so far! i love the mixing/matching system of the guilds mechanic in particular, that's a really smart way to enhance replayability and keep each run fresh. every time i think "oh my god there's no way that interacts with this in the way i think it does" well...it does! and its rad!! instant classic

Shockingly good. I was worried it was not going to have much depth, but almost 2 hours in and I can see I've got another 80% of the game to go. The mixing and matching of factions completely changes the feel from game to game.

Indie Gem ! Can higly recommend it.

very creative little city builder very fun and a nice variety, it keeps you on edge with your planning