At some point, online game critics and journalists will put collectively a complete examine on the influence Balatro had on the trade — of how so many video games that got here after tried to seize its essence by including complicated methods to in any other case easy, simply understood video games. Till then, I’m gonna play Dogpile.
Dogpile is a deckbuilding match-3 roguelike that builds on the type of merge video games like Suika Game by including a Balatro-like twist. The result’s a cute, cozy (in each style and vibe) sport that appeals to each the numbers-go-up and the dog-loving sicko in me. Drop matching canine on high of one another to create greater canine that reward you with factors to unlock increased ranges. The smallest unit of canine is a Chihuahua, two Chihuahuas merge to kind a Pomeranian (at the very least that’s what I feel it’s), and so forth. The canine pile up the taking part in subject kinda like Tetris, and in addition like Tetris, if the canine spill excessive of the sector, it’s sport over.
Merging canine is the best a part of the sport. It’s the place the participant has the least management — all the pieces is topic to the whims of gravity, physics, and trajectory — but additionally the place Dogpile is essentially the most thrilling. The canine themselves are cute, contorted into enjoyable, confounding shapes that generally exhibit a butthole or two. Introducing modifiers like making the canine bouncy or magnetic provides an attention-grabbing bodily element to the sport — Dogpile is match-3 Tetris, sure, however constructed with a physics engine. It feels so foolish, so “child distracted by jangling keys” to say {that a} pug glomming onto one other pug to make a dachshund is gameplay motion value highlighting within the 12 months of our gaming lord 2025. However the little man does so with a satisfying “pop” accompanied by a cute little “arf” that like Benoit Blanc, I’m compelled.
Although the sport has nothing to do with poker, you may see the DNA of Balatro operating all through. Like Balatro, every spherical you’re dealt a hand from a deck of playing cards which have canine because the totally different fits. Additionally like Balatro, you get cash to spend on modifying your deck with extra playing cards and tags that work much like Balatro’s jokers. For $15 (of in-game cash, there aren’t any microtransactions), you may both purchase a chow chow card or a tag that makes sure canine spin in place to agitate the canine pile for extra merging alternatives. Once you win a spherical, you additionally go to the grooming salon the place you modify your canine playing cards straight. You can provide a canine constructive traits like “pleasant,” making them magnetically drawn to their matches. Or you may wash away damaging traits like fleas, which negate any constructive traits a card might need.
Constructing your canine deck filled with synergies to extend your factors is the place Dogpile is essentially the most like Balatro and the place the majority of your strategic pondering comes into play. I like to offer my canine the barking trait that makes them disturb the pile with a bark once they’re dropped. That mixed with the tag that awards factors each time a canine barks makes for a brain-pleasing show of meters filling up and money register noises going off that basically drives residence the truth that numerous these well-intentioned, celebrated Balatro-likes faucet into the psychology of playing addition to make them stick.
Dogpile doesn’t really feel very deep. There aren’t any boss challenges. Failing to fulfill the purpose threshold doesn’t finish a run, however as an alternative makes you choose from a inventory of damaging occasions or traits which might be both simply ignored or so detrimental that you simply lose the sport instantly. In contrast to Balatro, Dogpile doesn’t encourage the identical feeling of countless chance of the sorts of decks you may construct.
Dogpile isn’t the primary sport to complexify the standard match-3 style, and I don’t know if its similarities to Balatro are intentional or not. However I like seeing how video games can push Balatro’s system past poker — particularly if a canine is concerned.
And sure, you may pet them.
Dogpile is out now on Steam.