Ballionaire

It just isn't /fun/. It feels completely arbitrary if you get a good run or not, and even when you do go infinite it's just...woo. that's it. I played 6 runs, won 2, got $1 billion in a single drop, and uninstalled.

It had a lot of potential but felt short compared to similar games.

I'm considering this a neutral review, due to a mixture of some really good things about Ballionaire, along with some really disappointing things too. Ballionaire is very, very fun, sometimes. It can be quite addicting, and there is enough variety in terms of "build" and how each run goes and can go that it can be hard to put down after losing a run, or a few runs in a row. The idea of playing this game ends up luring you in, but the reality of playing it makes you want to stop after too long. First of all, the mechanics are a mess. Just, like, all of the mechanics. All of them. Every different "build" feels like an island, completely separated from everything else. Synergy between "builds" feels almost jarring. Even getting a good setup going can feel like pure luck. A strategy will net you a win one time, and immediately after that same strategy will not even get you 5000$. And it is a massive issue that it is simply not realistically possible to build towards a certain trigger style across the whole board. And a single game is so short that it doesn't even feel like it's actually building up to anything. Ballionaire is a game which looks so bright, sounds so crisp and…

After 100%'ing the game, it's a meh. The only interesting maps are Pyramid and Sewer. Every other map highlights the flaws within the system of Pachinko. Because everything needs to be "Bonked" (code for touched by another ball), you cannot rely on clever combos. You need specific items spammed within a Bonk Zone, or worse yet, stack Closet+Ginger. Yes, two items can actually win the game, even on the highest difficulty. I'll probably never return to this, but it at least intrigued me for the first 3 hours, making it simply okay. 5/10, 5 being average

Eugh

Great game, takes a while to get used to, especially with the different boons, triggers, holders and movers. But once you get the hang of it, the $$ will roll in. Good variety on levels and with the new updates with new additions, each run can be wildly different. Works well on Steam Deck, however, once you start to really climb in your runs, your frame rate will suffer immensely (my last run was $2.7b with 190k bounces and I had a frame rate of 1, count them 1, FPS even with lossless scaling active on x4).