You won’t be... board... playing this one- sorry, yeah, sorry, sorry

Image credit: Blukulélé

It is inevitable that when a game like Balatro rocks up, is really good, and makes a gazillion dollars, that there will be the odd imitator here and there. Sincerity, flattery, yada, yada, yada, point is, it’s all fine as long as you at least put enough of a twist in there to make it more of an "influenced by" over a "wholesale ripoff" kind of thing. I think Gambonanza, a roguelike deckbuilding chess game, fits into the former quite nicely.

Now, I’m not going to explain chess to you, you already know how that works. How Gambonanza works is that instead of the usual 8x8 grid, it has a much smaller 5x5 one. When you start a run, you have just three lowly pawns to work with. Your goal is to capture all of the enemy pieces, which are randomised per run, and if a pawn manages to reach the other end of the board it gets a promotion, i.e. you can turn it into a rook, knight, queen or other pieces. But the Balatro of it all are perks you can acquire called Gambits.

These are essentially the equivalent of Balatro’s Joker cards, modifiers that can aid you in your quest to chess. For example, one Gambit allows you to skip your opponent’s turn if you manage to capture an opposing piece with a pawn. Another Gambit earns you a king piece upon earning a promotion, which, as a point, you can also have a team full of kings, if you can get that many - as long as you have no more than three per round.

Beating a round earns you money, money lets you buy gambits or more pieces, you can continue to see the Balatro comparison in its meta strategic elements, but ultimately you’re still playing Chess. Well, chess where there are boss battles, and pieces that have extraneous effects like tiles disappearing when your opponent captures one of your pieces, so not exactly chess, but you get what I mean.

It’s all quite neat and satisfying, there isn’t the overwhelming sensation of stress that comes from playing actual chess, the Gambits feel useful, and you can only have five of them so no overpowered runs for you. It’s chess Balatro! And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’d like to have a go yourself, then you can head to the game’s Steam page to try out its current playtest.