4/5 ★ – NiGHTS108's review of Nubby's Number Factory.

Oh my gawdddd Nights came back Probably the biggest takeaway I have from Nubby’s Number Factory is that it proves Balatro-likes are going to be a thing moving forward. I like that a lot. Balatro is one of three video games I’ve actually played this year so far, with the other two being Doom II as usual and of course Nubby’s Number Factory, so seeing this game pop up is a nice surprise. In terms of tone, approach and aesthetic Nubby’s Number Factory nails what it’s going for, which is this very like 90s PC game look, like the old Space Jam website turned into a video game. Not one part of this game feels anachronistic or off, which is honestly really impressive and something I don’t even think Ultrakill did that well, for reference. I like that the humour of it is fairly understated and it’s mostly just played straight. I can definitely see an alternate reality version of this game that leans way too hard into the look so I’m glad that’s not something that happened here. Gameplay wise of course I’m inclined to compare it to Balatro. I don’t really want to, but like, the two games almost have the exact same flow going on. I could list examples to you but I probably don’t need to if you’ve so much as seen gameplay from both Balatro and Nubby. Nubby, relative to Balatro, feels a lot more loose, for better or for worse. I do like that this game in a lot of ways allows for more fun with the concept than Balatro, Balatro in general is a game much more concerned with balance than Nubby, Nubby has a lot more fun with its equivalent to Balatro’s decks, which is different variations of the instructor you can have, Tony. Unlike Balatro’s decks, some of these “Tonys” as I’ll refer to them break the game in pretty amazing ways, like to explain one of them in Balatro terms, imagine if there was a deck that made Blueprint 20x more common and at half price and it was one of the first decks you got. The main way to me the gameplay in general differs from Balatro is that instead of having this wide variety of things to pick from and having the game mostly just lean on that, there’s actually a fairly limited amount of items at just over 50 versus Balatro’s 150 but a lot of ways to mess around with how they work thanks to the perks, which can add alternate ways in which you can trigger items to get points. It’s pretty nifty I would say. Same for foods too, which I suppose stand in for Balatro’s tarot cards and planet cards if you will. I don’t really want to just compare Nubby to Balatro, but hey, maybe the game shouldn’t have invited these comparisons so much if it didn’t want me to make them. Probably my only real criticism of this game is that it does just feel a little shallow, admittedly I haven’t unlocked all the Tonys yet and some of the ones I haven’t got do seem pretty interesting, and it’s by no means a dealbreaker or anything, I’ve been playing Nubby at least a bit every day for a week now, I suppose I’d just say I keep kinda falling into the same builds. I don’t wanna bring that up too much though because Nubby’s Number Factory is just in general very crafty, very nifty, and just very charming. I probably shouldn’t have opened with the Balatro-like thing because it would work very well here at the end. I like Nubby’s Number Factory. I hope it is an indication of more things like it to come.