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0 Time flies when you’re having fun! It only feels like last week I was checking out Ballionaire‘s Steam Next Fest demo and now here I am reviewing the full game! Developed by newobject and published by Raw Fury, the game is available now on Steam for an introductory price of £9.99.
Welcome fellow Ballionaires
It’s been just over a month since I spent my first 10 hours with the game on PC. With another 6 hours recorded, how vibrant is Ballionaire‘s full package? That’s what I’m here to talk to you about. If you’ve played the Ballionarie demo, are you excited for the full drop? Let us know in the comments what has you bouncing off the walls to play!
Gameplay
Ballionaire confidently introduces itself as “a fast-paced, kinetic roguelike, where strategy meets physics to create outrageous wealth!”. This places it within the growing “casino-verse” indie genre pioneered by Vampire Survivors and (TGA) Game of the Year nominee Balatro. As a pachinko game, all we need is a dice or roulette game to complete the set.
Ballionaire focuses on progressing through the ranks of a capitalist cult that has a weird obsession with pachinko. You’d think tax evasion would be a more reasonable way of getting rich quickly. You’ll face three elders; The Keeper, The Adept, and finally The Hierarch. Each run is made of 9 tributes, 3 per elder. Tributes are an increasing score threshold (of money) that you must reach at the end of a number of ball drops.
Each elder also gives you a Tribulation that negatively modifies your ball drops on the first tribute of their set (tributes 1, 4, and 7). These can range from roaming blocks that stop score being generated by nearby objects, unremovable blocks you must place on the board, or passive effects. Should you fail to reach a tribute, it’s game over and you start a new run. Another thing under your control is boons. They are the counter to Ballionaire elder’s Tribulations, providing a passive positive effect. You draft a boon after each successful tribute.
Each board has a different theme, some with additional mechanics to change up gameplay session to session. Unlike a traditional pachinko board, these boards don’t have a score zone at the bottom. All but one of the boards have pegs that can change the direction of where the ball drops, as well as generating a small bit of score. Ballionaire offers you a draft of objects to place. Each object has its own effects and synergies that are key to getting higher scores and multipliers. These can range from objects you want to hit, items you can pick up, hats, vehicles, creatures to slay, and different types of balls. While playing I also found certain synergies worked better on certain boards.
So pairing this all together in my experience, a new addition that I didn’t know I needed, was a pinball themed table. It introduces two board specific mechanics: limited use flippers (bound to mouse buttons or controller triggers), and a skillshot. The skillshot trigger, when bonked into, refreshes all uses of the flippers and moves to a random place on the table. This board also didn’t feature pegs so there was no way to passively generate money. I quickly discovered that synergies that spawn additional balls weren’t beneficial, as I wanted to keep as many balls in play for as long as possible.
Ballionaire brings this all together to create a strong core gameplay loop, banking on rougelite and buildcrafting. In short, you get to build your own dopamine rush though that can come with frustration if things don’t work out as planned. You could argue that there are three layers of difficulty: the board you select, the objects and boons you draft and how well they synergise, and the difficulty levels themselves paired with Tribulations. These were common factors that led to my failed runs.
Graphics and Audio
I was playing this on a PC with an Nvidia 750ti graphics card, and an Intel I5K CPU (2017). While the game can run on older systems – buyer beware. Spawning multiple balls caused my PC to slow to the pace of a powerpoint presentation while audio still played. I found myself giggling as I pushed the boundaries of what actually could break the game. For the majority of you reading, these issues should be minor to non-existent.
On the art front, I’ll repeat what I said in my demo review: Ballionaire‘s vibe is joyful and vibrant. I wouldn’t be surprised if art direction (handled by Fury Studios) was the start point for marketing and identity. Key art focuses on bright hues and saturation in aqua blue, orange, and off-white whilst being appealing to the eye. Paired with a bold, playful, cartoon art style that wouldn’t look out of place as a sticker sheet.
Playful sound effects, bouncy logo credits, and Stevia Sphere’s electro-pop soundtrack invoking feelings of early platformers. Ballionaire delivers on putting you in a playful mindset as soon as you boot it up. I was (jokingly) cursing whoever it was that could make a song that catchy. Options are understandably limited given the solo-developer scope. The separate audio sliders for music and sound effects are helpful if get overwhelmed as gameplay gets increasingly chaotic.
Players may notice a lack of accessibility options within the game. While I personally don’t have any issues with photosensitivity or colour blindness, I did lose track of balls on occasion. An option that helps with readability or reduces UX clutter could be beneficial. Also the changing colours on the main title screen could also cause some issues.
Longevity
Ballionaire doesn’t ask for a lot of your time, which is actually a good thing. There’s no in-depth story that you’ll be anxious to dodge spoilers for. No rotating daily challenges or seasonal events. The game aims for shorter game play sessions by design. Does the game have replay value and longevity? Yes.
There are two branches of progression. The first is how Ballionaire handles unlocking new objects to use in drafts. Defeating all of an elder’s tributes in a run grants you unlock credits on a loyalty card. The Keeper gives you 1, The Adept an additional 2, and The Hierarch granting 3. A total of 6 unlocks per full successful run. These unlocks are spent at a gacha-style vending machine. There are no in-game purchases or real world money exchanges happening – fully play to earn. When you spend an unlock, the machine gives you a draft of 3 objects or boons that you currently don’t have. Pick one and it will be available in all future drafts. There are 76 of them to collect, so get to dropping those elders!
On top of this, there are three tabs in the play section: Standard, Custom, and Labs. Standard is the main way you’ll play if you want to earn unlocks. There are a variety of difficulty tiers for most tables. These range from Ascendant through to the hardest: Billionaire++.
You start with Initiate difficulty when you’re first picking up and learning the core gameplay loop. This mode locks you to the pyramid table and disables earning unlocks. However, there are no negative elder modifiers, lower tribute thresholds, and the three starter packs from the demo: Bounce House, Water Park, and Snack Break. These are stronger than the usual starter packs. After this, the world is your bouncy oyster to profiteer from.
If you want a suggested progression loop, you can play each standard table on each difficulty level. This tests your mastery of pachinko-based capitalism all the way to Ballionaire++. At the hardest level tribulations will be extremely punishing, and persist between elders for the whole run. The devil horns don’t lie. Alternatively, there is also a sandbox difficulty for low stakes fun. However, this disables progress for unlocks and achievements – which is the case for Custom and Labs modes too.
The next tab is Custom. If you think you can do a better job at being an elder, here is where you get to live out that fantasy. You can tweak just about every option available, including what starting objects, boons, tribulations, and tribute thresholds you have.
Finally there’s Labs. After each run in standard mode, you can port gamestate into the lab for research. This is where you can really get to grips with learning synergies or understanding failures. You can also take a screenshot of your creations to share with other players. You’ll find plenty of room for experimentation here.
Final Thoughts
Ballionaire is a charming game that is here for a good time, not a long time. It doesn’t ask too much besides wanting you to have fun. Doesn’t matter if that’s a fair weather visit, or if you get the infamous “one more run” feeling. The presentation is immediately fun and delivers a carnival-like atmosphere. The gameplay reinforces this, but also offers a surprising challenge. Exploiting synergies are the key to success!
As a full package, Ballionarie personally resonated with me as a reminder what the joy of playing games is. Even if it’s sometimes frustrating, and would benefit from accessibility improvements.
Ballionaire profits from earning the Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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