[dsclough]

People win streak gold stake Balatro, A20H slay the spire, unfair slice and dice, and plenty of other games in this category. Nothing wrong with playing a game for 10 hours and being done with it but calling them rng fiestas just because you can’t beat the game on the hardest difficulty every time after 10 hours is a bit dismissive of the level of effort that is put in to getting these games as tightly tuned as they are.

[square_usual]

I'm not GP, but I thought I'd weigh in given I basically started this thread. I watch Balatro University who has the longest gold stake streak in Balatro, and while I respect that, I don't think that counters the point that the genre is heavily dependent on RNG. Winning isn't fun by default, and neither is losing boring. But you can win in ways that are boring (e.g. by getting a "broken" start and crushing through all stages) and lose in ways that are boring (e.g. by getting terrible rng that makes each round a slog until you finally lose.) With a rogue{like, lite} you are always at the mercy of RNG to see which of the {win, lose} x {fun, boring} combos you're in for, which when you're busy and have limited time to play games is extremely discouraging.