Luck be a Landlord

A Podcast Review of Luck be a Landlord: This week we cover the 2021 Balatro-progenitor Luck be a Landlord! How should we put a super fun but small-scoped game on the tier list?

On this episode we go through the communist sensibilities of the solo-developer and contrast the ostensibly serious themes with the goofy simple gameplay. We both got fully sucked in to Luck be a Landlord, racing to complete all the ascension-equivalents (apartment floors) and deciding to record this episode on a whim rather than playing video games. Really speaks to how much we were itching to talk about this! Playing LBAL really demonstrated to us that we have a soft-spot for these arcade-adjacent roguelites that are quick to get in and out of. The metagame maybe leaves a bit to be desired, but does a roguelite have to be a 100-hour experience? Can't it just be something short and sweet?

It was really neat seeing the systems that now define a whole genre of Balatro-likes at their inception, and even more neat to realize that the game underpinning these is legitimately fun to play. LBAL does synergies as well as any deck-builder and is impressively well designed in allowing for skill expression while staying true to the conceit of the game being a slot machine you spin. Little did we know at the time of this record that we'd see a wave of slot-machine roguelites in the future (Cloverpit, Slots & Daggers, Cat God Ranch, etc) - I think LBAL still did it best.