i have noticed that a lot of steam next fest are games that try to do the balatro trend, but then their own way.
| Straight up clone | Enjoyable | Originality | Review | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo Chess | 75 | 65 | 50 | it has no tutorial, so I had to figure it out from balatro knowledge. It is a cosy game, but heavily inspired by balatro. It is also quite hard to read what is going on, what is scoring, and why you are getting x points. I would give this game a 6.8. |
| rogueJack21 | ||||
| tabulo | Wow, out of all the Balatro-like games in steam next fest 2025, this one is different. I will actually continue to play this game instead of just trying them to review them. I will start this review by saying, I am a chess geek and I have been addicted to Balatro. Tabolu is a merge of Chess and Balatro executed well, but it is more strategic than luck based. Things like card packs have not been ported, so you’ll always know what you buy. I would recommend this game to anyone that likes chess. That being said, there are some things that could be improved: 1. a boss effect where you have to score a red piece x amount of times should add an UI element so that people can visually see what is happening. I died 2 times to this because the game is not visually indicating how it works. 2. add a help page, or an encyclopedia, a page where people can see examples of when something counts as being scored, what happens when something is scored, and how do points work. Because I am a person that would continue to figure this out myself, but I know that a lot of people would find it overwhelming, and this is partly because you just chose chess, which can already be overwhelming. But it is also because you don’t give much insight in what is going on. 3. how do i unlock board 3? What is a gold board? Is this not included in the demo? Because if that is so, then don’t show the unlock requirement in the demo. 4. show the selected board effect on the info tab, I completely forgot that I had selected the blackboard after returning to the middle of a game 5. After you’ve scored the round: you should be able to look at how each piece scored that round. It’s easy to miss in scoring what’s going on. So keep the score on the pieces And then maybe the player can press a button to close that and have their base stats shown again. Also would be great if u could hover the unit to get a breakdown of where all its points are coming from. I think this is really important. I have no clue whats going on in later lvs. | |||
| dice a million | ||||
| cardopolis | ||||
| dominova | ||||
| cardinal descent | 80 | 50 | 60 | it does have a tutorial, and original ideas. but it isn’t really exciting. I’d say it is a 6/10 as a Balatro clone, but when viewed as a standalone it is a 7/10 |