All systems go

LocalThunk, the pseudonymous developer of poker-themed deckbuilder Balatro, swirls their mouse pointer over a card as they share their screen with us during a Zoom call. “A lot of new players are very confused by this card,” they say, referring to a joker that means all cards in your deck are considered face cards. On its own, they explain, it doesn’t give you any points. It doesn’t boost your multiplier. It doesn’t help you score any more chips or earn any extra money by itself. But in conjunction with others… “It’s a facilitator,” they say, a degree of triumph in their voice. They sift through their card collection and pick out another. “Scary Face: all face cards give +20 chips. So put those two together and now all cards give +20 chips. Faceless joker: if you discard face cards, then you get three bucks.” Which means every single card you discard tops up your funds.

There’s much to be said for a meticulously authored piece of interactive entertainment, one that ensures everyone has a similarly optimal play experience. But we’re increasingly drawn to the games that build possibility spaces in which different systems can intersect to produce unexpected results. See also Dragon’s Dogma 2: each player queuing up to spend 15 minutes with the game at this year’s TGS seems to come away with a different anecdote, a result of Capcom having built a game that prioritises rules and systems over hand-crafted set-pieces. Even director Hideki Itsuno finds himself surprised by his own game, regaling us with a story of a disastrous excursion with an unexpectedly uplifting ending.

Clashes of a different kind await in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which keeps a tighter rein on the player, even as its turn-based brawls offer dynamic elements of their own. Kazuma Kiryu, never exactly a stickler for the rules, gets to attack in real time – though his cancer diagnosis might well have players wishing they had the ability to rewrite the apparent conclusion of his story, too.