Joker Madness 🃏

The main idea is fresh (at least in video gaming I think), but it becomes repetitive quite soon. It's a fun game for in between, however. And the greatest strength lies in PvP, when it becomes a fun little face-to-face game.
My feeling is that it may need more tactical depth (like more limited money oder a limit of possible joker per round or per match) and I hope this is reworked during Early Access.

So yeah, for the small price and the possibility of playing online, I'll give it a recommendation - as long as you are not scared by the font which can be hard to decipher sometimes. 🙃

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Joker Madness has an interesting premise where the the AI receives the card you didn't pick all the while you both draft jokers that boost or nullify both yours and AI's cards. Unfortunately, once the novelty wears off the rough edges and lack of meaningful progression make way for the repetition to settle in quite quickly.

Understandably the early access means lack of polish but the cards are too hard to see even in fullscreen, and windowed mode is even worse (also the rules were illegible). The main screen animation is also too long.

The jokers you buy change in price dynamically, which is an interesting idea, but it happens that buying one joker causes another to cost 0, so you buy those, and then another joker costs less, so you buy that one, chaining joker reactions which feels a bit unfair.

Considering the game is EA and low price, I'm giving it a Mixed recommendation. Probably better to play against a friend though.

Favorite mechanics

• Take a card and opponent gets what you didn't take

The positive

+ Some new ideas

+ Good tooltips on how scores are calculated

The neutral

* Lack of polish

The negative

- Gets repetitive quickly

- Nothing to play forward to in single player

Conclusion:

Some interesting ideas, but requires polish and a stronger gameplay loop to counter the repetition. Probably better with friends. Mixed recommendation, 6.5/10