Payroll

[h1]SUPER EDIT[/h1] Within LESS THAN 24 HOURS of my review, the developer not only responded, but pushed a fix FULLY fixing my only disappointment with the game. My only complaint is 100% gone now, and given such a responsive and proactive dev, I see a very bright future for this game and would bump up the price point at which I'd recommend it. I'm leaving most of my review intact, but striking out the singular complaint that's no longer relevant. [h3]Original Review:[/h3] I first played Payroll during a recent Next Fest, not sure if it was the last or if before then, so the 1.8 hour count is misleading and is closer to 6 hours. In fact, most of the demos I tried to play 30-60 minutes of and no more so that I could get through a dozen or so, but by the time I realized I had played at least 30min of Payroll, it was 4 hours later. The core loop is extremely enjoyable for Payroll; customizing your dice and creating synergies is extremely fun. I'm not super good at games in general, nor do I often venture into high difficulty modes, but at least base difficulty, I've found the balance to be a good mix of challenging yet not frustratingly punishing. [strike]My only complaint, if you can call it that, is really more of a mixed bag. At the start of a run, you're given random faces on your dice from a large pool of possibilities -- and that can basically make or break the beginning of the game. I've had some runs where I struggled to even beat the first table (and eventually started just checking the dice an abandoning any 'trash' runs), and others where the faces I get are so good that I finish the first bet in one roll. When I say that this game is a roll of the dice, that's not maybe how I wanted to mean it. I do think many people will view this as a positive though, as it keeps each run feeling fresh, but I can't help but feel like there's a better way to do it somehow. Maybe instead runs could start you with a certain number of pips and you get 1-3 rounds of shops to pick from? Idk what the best solution is, but it feels like there's really high variance that's completely out of the player's control at the start.[/strike] [b]As mentioned in the edit, this has been completely fixed![/b] In general, I definitely recommend Payroll. I'm not sure if I'd fully recommend it at $13 personally, even if I bought it for 90% of that on launch, but if you're not hurting for cash, it's definitely a fun game. And if you ever see it on sale for $8-10, then I think absolutely anyone with any passing interest in chance-based roguelikes should pick it up for that much. [b]Update:[/b] I bumped it up to $8-10 given the dev's proactive responsiveness, bc I appreciate that a lot in a dev. For the sake of recording my original words, the original review said $5-8.