I'm not a full-time Balatro player, but I do have occasional spells where Jimbo lunges from my screen and throttles me until I've sunk about 50 extra [[link]] hours into it. [[link]] My doctors tell me that's a 'hallucination' and a 'deflection from me avoiding my [[link]] responsibilities', but Jimbo tells me they're lying, so I'm not sure who to believe.
Anyway—Playstack, the company what published Balatro, has gone ahead and done it again. The only thing stopping me from falling into a void and devouring more of the new coin-pusher roguelike Raccoin is the fact it's merely in . Phew! Close one.
Raccoin: Coin Pusher Roguelike swaps out your poker deck for a coin machine. Your objective? Knock as many coins as you can into the void below. Doing so gets you both points and tickets.
You need points to pass the round. Meanwhile, tickets are your currency, which you can use to buy all sorts of gubbins, but they also double up as your life-line, letting you exchange some tickets for your additional basic coins, of which you only receive so many.
There's also a "spin meter", which builds up if you score enough coins at once. This can create bonuses, such as vomiting a random amount of coins into your top tray—or, my personal favourite, a massive tower of coins that's just begging to be toppled over.
To help you rack those points up, there's a couple of secondary mechanics—the coin clip holds multiple kinds of special coins (bought in between rounds) with certain abilities. You can upgrade it horizontally, letting you store a wider variety of coins, or you can improve it vertically, letting you store duplicates.
In the runs I played, for example, I found myself buying—and then storing—a bunch of "bunny coins", which create more, slightly weaker bunny coins upon touching each other. I'd often combo these with the Umbrella, which spits out a bunch of your most-purchased coin. The result? Bunnies. Bunnies everywhere.
You can also get "Chips". These are the equivalent of your Jokers in Balatro, or your Relics in Slay the Spire. They seem a touch undercooked at the moment—which could just be a game knowledge issue—but my favourite was by far one that allowed me to shake the machine after ejecting 30 basic coins.
Remember that coin tower I mentioned earlier? One of those was stacked high enough to go past the top of the screen. I shook it, and cackled like a madman as a tide of coins started to tank my framerate. A perfect little dopamine spike, crucial to making these games soar.
It's a lot more chaotic than Balatro (which is saying something), but even in its pre-Early Access state, Raccoin's already showing a ton of promise. I highly recommend signing up for the playtest if you get a chance.
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1. Best overall:
2. Best budget:
3. Best 14-inch:
4. Best mid-range:
5. Best high-performance:
6. Best 17-inch: