After each spin, you get to choose between three randomly drawn Symbols to add to the machine. Each Symbol has its own quirks and interactions with other Symbols. For example, if you were to get a Milk, and a spin lands the Cat right next to the Milk, the Cat consumes the Milk and you get a nice cash bonus.
Eventually, your machine will have lots of Symbols.
Although you'll only see 20 Symbols on the machine at once, you can collect a lot more than that. But you want to be choosy, and sometimes even skip past the Symbol selection screen, because this game is a deckbuilder. You want the Symbols with the best synergies to come up often, which means keeping your Symbol collection trim. One of the Symbols gives you a removal token to help you do that.
Occasionally, you can also select an Item. An Item differs from a Symbol in that it's an always-active buff that can make certain Symbols give more money, cause rarer Symbols to appear more often, and many other effects.
When rent is due, you pay it. Then your landlord raises the rent and it's time to spin again. If you can't make rent, you get evicted and it's game over. But if you're able to pay the ever-increasing rent twelve times, you win the game and the next floor is unlocked.
There are 20 floors in all, each a bit harder than the last. It took me many attempts over the course of 5 hours to beat just the first floor, but then it clicked and I beat floors 2 to 16 pretty easily, often in one attempt. The last four floors are where the real challenge is. You start each run developing a strategy based on the symbols you get. You're getting cats, so should you go for a cat run? What about a jewel run or a fruit run? Midway, you might realize that your chosen strategy isn't going to pan out, but then you get a rare and powerful Symbol or Item that saves you or makes another strategy feasible.
That's what makes each run of LBAL feel like an adventure. This game might not be as deep, challenging, and sharp-looking as Balatro, but it has other things that help make it addictive. Like cute sound effects when the Symbols interact with each other, a soundtrack reminiscent of MOD trackers from the 90s, and a cheeky, politicized theme.
I bounced off Balatro, but LBAL really did it for me. (And I learned from this making-of-Balatro video that LBAL was one of the main inspirations for Balatro.) If you love Balatro, I think you'll at least like LBAL. If you happened to buy the 2021 Palestinian Aid Bundle on itch.io, then you have this game already. So I encourage you to try it. Just as I should give Balatro another chance.
