Gambonanza is the most underappreciated game of 2026 (so far)

Forget (almost) everything you know about chess

"I actually think creativity comes from constraints." That's what Paul Giovannini, the solo indie dev at Blukulélé Studio, told Polygon in an email interview. In May, he released Gambonanza, a chess-themed roguelike where players need to forget pretty much everything they know about chess, besides how the pieces move.

"Working with chess was incredibly interesting because it gave me a very solid foundation to experiment from," he continued. "The movement of the pieces, the visual language, the board itself... players already understand so much of it instinctively. That allowed me to focus on twisting expectations instead of teaching an entirely new game from scratch."

While chess is very much the hook for Gambonanza, mechanically, it's very different from the ancient game. For example, having your king captured doesn't mean you lose the game. In fact, you can have as many kings on the board as you like. It's arguably the weakest piece in the game because it's still limited to its one-square movement in any direction, but it could also be the strongest piece in your run.

That's where the beauty of Gambonanza being a Balatro-inspired roguelike comes in: you can equip modifiers that completely change the importance of different pieces. There are gambits, which are essentially jokers, and modified tiles, which will apply one of many special effects to a piece when it's landed on. Getting the right combination of these can result in some very overpowered runs.

"I built Gambonanza in a very organic way," Giovannini explained. "For almost every possible interaction (playing a piece, capturing one, waiting, placing a piece onto the board, etc…) I designed Gambits that react to those actions in some way. Most of the systems are essentially built around simple “if X happens, then Y happens” logic.

"But what becomes exciting is when these interactions start chaining together. X creates Y, which triggers Z, which suddenly creates something completely unexpected. Sometimes, by the end of a run, a powerful synergy makes it feel like you’re not even playing chess anymore."

He gave an example of when a player joined the game's Discord server to boast about a ridiculous chain reaction they'd discovered: "It was something like losing a rook gave them gold, but the 'blessed' tile (which adds that piece to your stock) duplicated it thanks to a different gambit, which triggered a templar effect creating protective tiles (when a piece moves here, it's invincible for one turn), and landing on one of those tiles gave them another rook that restarted the whole chain again."

In the early stages of each run, Gambonanza requires a lot of planning. You're often working with limited resources, and you need to capture all of your opponent's pieces as efficiently as possible to maximize your gains. By the third stage though, your runs can spiral; it becomes less about planning each turn and more about playing reflexively, which in theory, is the complete opposite of chess.

It's incredibly satisfying to reach that level, though, much as it is when you've strategized into a one-card-hand only run in Balatro or you find the Mom's Knife x Ludovico Technique in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. For every all-powerful Gambonanza run, you'll have plenty more where beating all five stages was like getting blood from a stone, and even more where you fail on stage three or four because you couldn't find the right combo.

One major complaint since launch has been around the game's AI behavior though, because your opponent will often make seemingly non-optimal moves, sometimes sacrificing its own pieces in the process. Giovannini explained to me that this isn't quite accurate; the game is still playing to beat you, but it doesn't need to beat you immediately like it would in a standard game of chess. Here, it's trying to whittle you down:

"The run is made of around 25 consecutive encounters, and the player must survive all of them. The AI only really needs to win once. So the enemy’s role is often more about exhausting the player over time: forcing trades, reducing your material, weakening your board, making future encounters harder and harder until eventually you no longer have enough resources to continue.

"That philosophy creates a very different dynamic from competitive chess. The goal isn’t to simulate a perfect grandmaster opponent. It’s to create tension across an entire roguelike run. I also think that for playing against an AI to feel fun, the AI needs to make mistakes sometimes. One of the best feelings in games is recognizing an error, punishing it, and suddenly turning a terrible situation into a brilliant comeback."

He explained that in development, he experimented with "perfect" AI behavior, but players found it much less enjoyable because it either completely crushed newer players or "it became extremely passive and defensive whenever it calculated that it was ahead." That said, Giovannini is still looking to balance the game further — the recent 1.2.0 update features some changes along those lines — and he's open to more feedback.

Despite being one of the most popular demos during Steam Next Fest earlier this year, Gambonanza hasn't taken the roguelike genre by storm just yet. It peaked at just over 2,000 players at launch according to SteamDB, and it has settled at a daily peak of around 270 or so. But it deserves more, because even though it might not have quite as many permutations or possibilities as Balatro, it's a hell of a fun time and makes its inspiration proud.