Recent reviews by JubalTheLion

It's pronounced "Balatro"

::)

A massive pile of secrets that is not at all miserable. It's so much fun, even more so if you've enjoyed any Castlevania over the years.

The Great Ape is not that hard, people.

It's hard to recommend this game unless it's on deep discount and you're out of nonogram games to play.

It attempts to spin the nonogram formula with some very, *very* light RPG elements, but they largely boil down to minor variations on the timers and time penalties of other titles in the genre. Moreover, it is heavily held back by the puzzles being extremely basic. Very little detail is rendered from the puzzle images, resulting in puzzles that are front-loaded with information and therefore pretty boring to solve.

Accessibility options are pretty terrible. It is impossible to separately control the volume of the music and sound effects, nor is there any way to rebind keys.

If you're looking for a nonogram game with extra objectives and power-up focused gameplay, check out Pokemon Picross on the 3DS. It does way more with the concept with a much larger number of puzzles that are actually engaging to solve.

Pictoquest isn't a terrible game; especially for $1.19 plus tax it passed the afternoon pleasantly enough. But the puzzles are too mediocre for the rpg-ish mechanics to amount to anything interesting.

A wonderful little puzzle roguelike. Try the demo. If you enjoy it at all, easily worth the 4 bucks.

Every other roguelike deckbuilder is compared to this game for a reason. Play it.

We've had one infinity, yes. What about second infinity?

It's like Slay the Spire and Scrabble had a baby that was raised on pulp fiction. If any part of that description appeals to you, you'll probably have a good time.

If you have enjoyed any IGAvania, chances are you will love this game. I seriously cannot sing its praises enough.

Of the many cool things about this game, the one I want to talk about is the shard system. Nearly every enemy can drop a shard of their power. These can range from attacks to passive buffs to familiars. Fans will recognize this system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow's "soul" system, where nearly every enemy could drop a soul that would function as attacks/buffs/etc. But while I adore Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, there were a bunch of souls that I found to be underwhelming. If I killed a giant homunculus that fired a big ol' ****-you-in-particular laser, I'd get super excited to use that laser... only to find out that its soul merely let me clear some special ice blocks that showed up in 3 places.

The reason I bring this up is that the shards in Ritual of the Night largely tend to be freaking awesome. Starting from the very first shard you get, it has this awesome bouncing property that lets it hit a bunch of times depending on the terrain and how you aim it. And it just keeps getting better from there. They even made the comparatively boring passive shards fun: if you max out their rank, you get a version of that shard that you can turn on and off at will **without taking up a slot.**

It's so good. It's so friggin good.