Somehow, I've still not yet played Balatro – the award-scooping, poker-themed indie roguelike card game – and I'm not really sure why. The combination of roguelike mechanics with deckbuilding, all contributing to racking up utterly bonkers scores sounds like the kind of strangely enrapturing gameplay that I'd love. Case in point: Vampire Survivors, which I can confirm is an absolute banger.
But then I saw that Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit Fame was working on a word-based roguelike called Word Play. It's a Balatro-inspired game where rather than using cards to rack up points, you spell words using scored tiles – and as someone still somewhat committed to the daily puzzle grind, I was immediately hooked on the concept. After putting 17 hours into it, I'm surprised at just how engaging it is, keeping the simple monkey part of my brain occupied with a surprising amount of risk/reward gameplay from just letters and numbers.
