Combolands Is Ruining My Life

I am a simple person—I see a video from Northernlion comparing a game to Balatro and I click the link. This is the path that brought me to Combolands, a roguelike city builder that is currently haunting my every waking moment.

Combolandsis a lot like Balatro, to be fair, and that’s what sets it apart from other city builders. You choose two guilds at the start of your run-–essentially different decks that have their own synergies—and then place cards from your two decks on a map. These cards give you base points from their descriptions, but can also be combined with other cards near to them to give them multipliers. A Farmyard card will generate manure on an empty space near it. If you place a Composter near to the Farm, it will gain a multiplier for every Farmyard or Crops in its radius, giving you extra points, and also remove the manure, giving you even more points.

Figuring out how to create complementary pairings of cards and guilds is one of the pleasures of Combolands, and certainly one of the reasons why I keep coming back. I love this game, and it’s a constant temptation to play just one more run instead of diving into my unending pile of work. But like Balatro, it’s the little details in its sound design and presentation that I have really latched onto. It doesn’t have the same psychedelic jazz vibe that Balatro has, but it does have the same attention to detail.

Whenever you place a new card down on the board, there’s a satisfying “fwp,” like you’re drawing a card out of a deck. When your points are being tallied up, each point counted makes a “plink, plink, plink” sound, like a series of plastic tiles being sorted through. As much as I like building a little city, it’s this tangible sound design that makes each round, each card place, each point earned feel so electric. And when you score big, buildings crash into each other in the corner of the screen, turning into a twisting tower if you’ve really hit the jackpot.

There are a lot of little mechanics that are unique to this game that I also really enjoy. After a couple of runs you unlock the council; to earn the votes of the various characters that make up councilors, you have to meet a certain goal. Maybe the Warrior, who boosts the points you get from woodworking and training cards, wants you to use two more potions this round, or make more money this round, or remove buildings. If you meet that goal, you get your bonus.

A lot of games have taken inspiration from Balatro, from the way it kind of feels like gambling, or the way it lights up like a slot machine when you get a high score. Balatro’s system of throwing together multipliers and score bonuses until you can utterly break the game is clearly an inspiration for Combolands, but it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it was also cribbing from the way Balatro presents itself. It feels like a real board game, in the way that Balatro really feels like playing with cards. Every time I’m not playing Combolands I’m hearing that plink plink plink in my head as I think about the next run.