I first reported on Ballionaire when it landed on Steam last month, after being seriously impressed by the game’s artistic overhaul and intrigued by the pachinko-inspired premise. Now I’m back to point you in the direction of the game’s new playable demo, which is out now and proper good.
The demo is available to download over on the Ballionaire Steam page, and it has arrived as part of the new Next Fest event intended to highlight upcoming games. Coincidentally, or not as the case may be, Ballionaire developer newobject has today announced a publishing partnership with Raw Fury, which will see the game release sometime later this year, if all goes according to plan.
What is Ballionaire?
Ballionaire is a pachinko-inspired roguelite with puzzle elements that is brought to life with bold and vibrant cartoon graphics. The aim of the game is to replace pegs on a board with powerful triggers that earn money when activated. It’s a simple premise that you’ll understand as soon as soon as you start playing, although there appears to be tons of nuance to learn via the many synergies between triggers that players can exploit.
Every round gives you five balls to drop onto the board. Each ball hits either triggers or standard pegs on its way down to the bottom, and once it has gone past the final pegs it’s time to fire the next one. The points you make from your ball activating triggers on the board is totalled together after five rounds, and if you’ve got enough you will pass on to the next challenge.
The demo has three different characters to battle through, but you probably won’t defeat them at the first time of asking. You’ll need a little luck, of course, but you’ll also need to play around with the mechanics. However, it’s this invitation to play and experiment that I think makes Ballionaire a very exciting game.
What’s in the Ballionaire Demo?
The free Next Fest demo includes three abstract bosses to beat: the Keeper, the Adept, and the Hierarch. To unlock each new challenge you must best the last, although the board doesn’t reset every time. This allows you to build a board full of triggers that can potentially interact with one another, if you’re lucky.
The three bosses represent a nice rising challenge across nine rounds, but to get near the end you will need to make some good decisions. As you progress you get to choose from a selection of triggers, and you also sometimes get to pick items that grant passive bonuses, too.
The magic happens when you group your triggers together, and that way they’re more likely to interact. When this happens you sometimes initiate huge combos that go on for ages. At times things can get really busy as different triggers hit each other, cause events to happen, and the screen fills with fireballs and water bombs.
It’s in the engine building that Ballionaire really shines. Different items interact with each other in different ways, and while you can’t be sure that two things will happen during any given run, you can make it more likely via your overall positioning of certain items. I’ll give you an example: the broom that you can see in the lower third of the screenshot above. When activated, it flies over to opposite side of the board, activating anything it touches on the way.
There are so many different triggers and they each have different functions. Some let the ball pass them by without affecting their movement and simply earn you the money you need to advance, while others ping the ball this way and that, or teleport your ball back to the top of the pyramid so it can roll down again and maybe earn some more points.
The fun comes from learning all of this for yourself. There are instructions on the items and triggers but they’re a bit vague sometimes, but I didn’t really care because the trial and error is so much fun here. I was reminded of the way that different items might interact in the excellent Luck be a Landlord, and I think anyone who likes that game will probably like this one. Peggle and Peglin fans will feel right at home, too. In fact, if you’re a fan of pachinko games in general then this demo comes highly recommended.
