After playing games with deep resonant themes and thinking about stuff like mortality, it’s nice to take a small breather and just play something kinda silly. Not a whole lot of mental overhead, practically zero emotional overhead, just exciting noises and bright colors and a few minutes of feeling like you’ve walked onto the slots floor of a casino in Las Vegas.
Ballionaire (currently on sale!) does that. A lot of bright and shinies, a lot of crazy noises, a lot of no-brain replayability.
The basic idea is that you’re building a pachinko board and you’re populating the pegs while meeting various money requirements:
Some pegs just straight up give you cash. A couple give you cash if they *AREN’T* hit (put those at the bottom corners). Some change the ball as it drops. I’ve seen water balls, coin balls, egg balls, and fire balls. Some react one way when they get hit by a normal ball but give some crazy response if they get hit by one of the special ones.
After a handful of turns, your board will look something like this:
And once you reach something like the endgame, you will have something that looks abosolutely chaotic:
There are multiple boards, not just the pyramid. There are six of various levels of insanity. The slot machine board pulls a slot machine when the ball first drops, the dangerwheel rotates as your ball falls through the pegs, the pinball board lets you use your flippers up to 10 times after the ball gets fired.
It’s a silly little game that is a wonderful palate cleanser that I probably wouldn’t pay full price for… but if you’re looking for a dumb game to play between engaging games, this is a fun little dumb game.
So… what are you playing?
