Gambonanza Review: Chess Goes Balatro, and It Works Amazingly

4 days ago 5

Published May 1, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT

Ethan Krieger is an Editor at DualShockers, where he covers reviews, guides, lists, features, previews, interviews, and gaming news. He began writing professionally in 2017 as a sports writer before moving into games coverage with DualShockers in 2024.

Before joining DualShockers, Ethan wrote for the FanSided Sports Network, including 8 Points, 9 Seconds, where he covered the Indiana Pacers, and Pelican Debrief, where he covered the New Orleans Pelicans. His background in sports writing, editing, and content strategy now informs his approach to gaming coverage, especially around reviews, rankings, guides, and event reporting. Ethan studied English at Arizona State University, with a focus on writing and text editing.

There comes a time when a question needs to be asked: What's the line between imitation and flattery when evaluating a piece of media that is so clearly inspired by something else that already exists? At first glance, Gambonanza, the new indie Roguelike based around chess, will most certainly immediately remind you of Balatro.

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Balatro was a critical darling, but there are plenty of other incredibly challenging deckbuilders that make it look basic.

And for so many of us, this will be intriguing at the very least. If you're like me, Balatro was your biggest indie game vice/addiction/highpoint in 2024. I know I put a truly shocking amount of hours into the game across multiple platforms, gushing to everyone I knew about it along the way.

Now, we have Gambonanza. And whether it's imitation, flattery, or something in between, I'm actually not nearly as interested in discussing that as I thought I would be going into this review. The reason for that is simple: Gambonanza freaking rules, and so clearly deserves a seat at the table in whatever Roguelike subgenre this is of taking classic tabletop games and refreshing them for modern players.

Familiar Aesthetics

So, sure, let's get every other comparison out of the way that we need to. Yep, Gambonanza really, really looks like Balatro. It's got the CRT TV vibe that almost lulls you into a weird state where you're half expecting the game to pivot into a weird horror game at any moment (I've had this feeling with Balatro and Gambonanza both, is this just a me thing?).

It's got the wavy line background that wiggles around unassumingly, like clouds rolling by in the sky for hours of your day, slowly but surely continually passing away. There's even a complete earworm of a main song, some hybrid of elevator music and lo-fi that doesn't sound like much at first, but soon is all you can hum for hours after logging out of the game, completely infecting your life from then on.

There's a shop between runs where you can spend earned money from each new encounter to add powerful Gambits, which work like Balatro Jokers, as well as add chess pieces to your resource pool and modify the game board in several beneficial ways. All of this will feel familiar. It is quite Balatro, of course. At the same time, I am totally, completely okay with all of this in this instance.

Balatro is ridiculously addictive. Though very basic in every premise, there's a sort of magic in the game's design that has an insane level of staying power well beyond what you'd typically expect from a game so basic, and in many ways, almost rudimentary feeling. That's not a slight at the design of the game at all. We all love it. We get it.

Gambonanza freaking rules, and so clearly deserves a seat at the table in whatever Roguelike subgenre this is of taking classic tabletop games and refreshing them for modern players.

Gambonanza and the small indie team at Blukulélé seem to understand all of this 100%, and they've managed to craft their own game with its own ruleset that takes this special sauce and applies it wonderfully to their new and unique ideas all the same.

You can call it derivative in some ways if you want. I get it. I felt it at first too. However, after spending each passing hour with the game, none of it ended up bothering me at all. Gambonanza is an awesome title in all of its own rights, and if any game has been able to take the Balatro formula and make it succeed in new and different ways, it's this one.

Relearning Chess

With all of that out of the way, let's discuss how Gambonanza actually works in practice. The game is based around classic chess, but obviously with plenty of twists and tweaks to make it fit the Roguelike genre. Instead of leveraging your game pieces against your opponent to capture the other player's king, the goal is simple: Eliminate every opposing game piece from the board.

Every traditional chess piece is still here, and all function as usual (until you start adding Gambits that can grant pieces additional movesets). The board, however, is shrunk down tremendously, with a new row being added to the end of the board each time you defeat one of five bosses throughout a run. By the end, the board becomes wide, but for a long time, you're working with significantly less real estate.

Another small, but hugely significant tweak is that pawns can only ever move one space forward at a time. This is a critical change, however, as once they reach the opposite end of the board, they can be promoted into any other type of piece you choose for the rest of a round (always a queen, unless you have Gambits which make another piece more valuable to you). In this way, pawns kind of feel like a Checkers piece, with you working to get them safely across the board to "king" them and break the rest of the match wide open.

You begin by only being allowed three pieces on the board at one time (increased by spending money at the shop), so you'll need to pick and choose which trio to bring into a game. If they're captured, they're gone forever, making the risk/reward of what you're playing with also a massive strategy factor. The other thing is your piece stock, which functions like a bench in a regular sport. Need to get someone else into the game? At the expense of a turn, you can sub in/activate pieces on the sidelines at crucial moments to swing a round back in your favor.

Gambonanza is an awesome game in all of its own rights, and if any game has been able to take the Balatro formula and make it succeed in new and different ways, it's this one.

The aforementioned boss fights also each add a new layer/tweak to an encounter, like not being able to tell what pieces you're starting a round with during your piece setup phase (which each round begins with), or removing your bench pieces entirely until you defeat them.

In many ways, all of this causes you to relearn and rethink how you've considered chess before, and that's a very fun puzzle to sort out in your mind. Early on, I had many moments where I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to checkmate an opponent's king on the table. This doesn't actually matter, however, as opposing kings are simply pieces to capture, not special ones to corner and trap.

Going Full Rogue

Gambonanza is absolutely a Roguelike, but in some ways, you won't feel this quite as much very early on. In fact, if I had one gripe with the game, it's that until you win your first run (no small feat), each round of the game actually unfolds the same in terms of opponent board layouts. Basically, each run you begin starts with the same little puzzle to solve, and continues to unfold the same ways, with the only difference being that boss fights are randomized at the end of each group of five puzzles (25 rounds/boards in total to win a run).

At a point, this does create a sense of repetitiveness for a bit, as you will surely lose many runs over and over, then restart, roll three new random starting pieces, encounter new and unique shops/Gambits, but also face the same puzzles again that you already did before. Eventually, however, I saw this setup as a strength, or at least not the issue I originally thought it could be.

You see, with a game like chess with such a defined moveset, I came around to appreciating that I could plan each new run (at least to an extent) by knowing how the action and puzzles were going to unfold throughout a new attempt. You start to learn and almost memorize what's coming next, allowing you to strategize and plan for new encounters in a way that typically isn't available in more totally RNG-dependant Roguelikes.

It also did take some time for me to realize how much stronger my collection of unlocked Gambits was really making me as I progressed/lost runs over and over. There simply is not the same level of Gambit synergy like you eventually get from Jokers in Balatro as you watch your chips and multipliers skyrocket once you line up 5+ cards in the top row and let them get to work. Still, the depth of Gambonanza is still absolutely there. You do just need to practice some patience and wait as you keep unlocking better and better Gambits run to run.

I saw some arguments from the game's demo that Gambits aren't good enough. The fact is, they are, you just need to really, really commit and invest in finding the magical ones that synergize together, and play long enough to have the stronger Gambits available in your pool. As such, I'd be shocked if someone won their first, or even fifth run of Gambonanza. I didn't keep track, but it took me... a long time to finally win. But I think this is ultimately another strength of the game, rewarding genuine learning and planning to finally start pulling off insane sequences of moves powered by specific Gambits to finally claim a victory. And it feels great when it happens.

Upon beating the game, you're also greeted with a ton of ways to modify future runs, and also realize that the game will now dole out new difficulty levels to conquer, much like new Stakes in Balatro. Yep, your Gambonanza journey is actually just now beginning. Incredibly, too, is that these new difficulties also bring new opponent board layouts, so any sense of repetitiveness from initial boards is now solved, as you have different setups and layouts to learn each step of the way from here. This is awesome design.

Sneakily Co-Op

One more random "Pro Tip" I want to give regarding Gambonanza is that, while the game is strictly single-player and offline, it is very sneakily an incredible "co-op" experience as well. Let me explain.

To be fully transparent, I personally struggled for a while to win a run of this game on my own. In fact, I started to lose track at the times I exclaimed aloud, "Oh, I'm so dumb," (it's okay, I'm a Soulslike player) as I failed to see a move that landed my pieces in trouble and stopped many runs in their tracks. I'm confident I would've gotten a victory eventually, but in truth, my first win came when sitting down with a partner next to me.

With two heads tackling the game at once, we were able to discuss every single made move, potential outcome, shop spending choice, playstyle strategy, and risk/reward option to finally claim a joint victory and unlock the rest of Gambonanza and all of its modifiers from there. This experience was a genuine, downright hoot.

While the game isn't really designed for co-op, it's such a fun way to play if you find someone that is down to fully lock-in with you and pour over all of the strategy of the game with you. Most of my failed runs took under an hour. In this co-op setting, it took my partner and I a good two or three hours to finish it all, because we were that focused on thinking through every possible outcome and choice that deeply. And it worked.

This also leads me to believe that there's a ton of opportunity for Gambonanza to blow up in some possibly unintended ways. I can see this being awesome at a game night if you can find people just as nerdy as you to tackle a run together. Streamers and their chats can work together to solve the puzzles and see if they can get some group-earned victories as well. I think all of this would be an absolute blast.

However you ultimately decide to play it, I really can't recommend Gambonanza enough. I had a couple of qualms at first, but once the depth, strategy, intensity, and straight up fun of the game fully revealed itself to me, I simply couldn't get enough.

Gambonanza is a Roguelike that absolutely feels like a team taking what made Balatro incredible and applying it to chess. This might seem derivative at first, but it's pulled off so well in the end that it ultimately feels like its own amazing thing entirely. Initial pacing at the beginning can feel a little slow and repetitive, but once you start unlocking new items via progression and simply learn the game, it becomes a deep and surprisingly intense loop of incredible and different-feeling chess action. Imitation or flattery, I don't really care. Gambonanza rules.

Review Score: 9/10

Reviewed on PC

Pros

Cons

An awesome new take on chess combined with familiar but wonderful Roguelike elements	Takes some time to fully reveal everything the game has to offer in terms of synergies and strategies
Great aesthetics and design, featuring an earworm soundtrack you cannot help but hum along to	Arguably somewhat repetitive until you start winning runs and unlocking new difficulties and modifiers
A great sense of reward as you learn how to conquer the game
Sneakily incredible to play alongside someone