It has happened again. Steam Next Fest has served me up another Balatro-style gambling-inspired roguelike that has eaten away at my entire week and severely curtailed the number of other demos I might have played. It's a pattern that has repeated across the last three major demo drops, and which I do not see myself breaking any time soon.
This time around, the main offender is Raccoin. Like Balatro, it's a game that uses a vaguely gambling-shaped framework to encourage you to create builds capable of scoring ever-increasing numbers of points. Here, the 'gambling' is one of those coin-pusher arcade machines. Instead of enhanced cards, you can purchase special coins with different effects; some are sticky, adhering to nearby tokens to ensure they all fall into the prize bin together; others are explosive, blasting coins towards the precipice instead; plenty more augment the value of coins they touch, offering more points once you claim them.
