Oh boy, I am in trouble. Like, serious trouble. As a reviewer for So Many Games, I’m supposed to play multiple games in a year so I can, well, review them. But I dread the day when Fame or Folly comes out, because I will spend so much time with this game. It feels like this has been catered specifically to my tastes, and the development team has taken all of the right lessons from the success of a game like Balatro. I was lucky enough to be granted access to an early build of the game, and despite some bugs limiting my chances of success, I still had an absolute blast.
But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Fame or Folly is the debut game by Grand Games Studio, and it calls itself the first ‘deckbuilder of deckbuilders’. That’s because you won’t be spending an hour crafting the perfect deck: you’ll be rebuilding it over and over, every minute of gameplay. That might sound complicated, but in reality, the game feels very intuitive to handle. It’s one of those easy-to-learn, hard-to-master types of deals.
In Fame or Folly, you are dropped into an alternate-reality Renaissance world, where all conflicts are settled on stage instead of on the battlefield. Your aim is to make it to the Grand Festival, an event where only the biggest and brightest of troupes get to take the stage. Win the festival, and you are granted a single, binding request from the king.
On your way there, you lead a ragtag caravan of performers and try to get the biggest applause possible to get you closer to your goal. Approval is currency, and silence can be lethal: it’s up to you to make it work. To do so, you’ll draft cards, the troupes who will perform for you. These come in five different classes: minstrels, vendors, mystics, outcasts and wardens. Learning which card to play when and how to create synergies between the different cards and classes is vital to your success, just like knowing when to fire one of your troupes. Your deck will be in constant rotation, trying to optimise your flow with each single performance.
To help your troupes out, you can also administer single-use props to help you out of a tight spot, and you can carry banners which function a whole lot like Balatro’s jokers. That’s not the only lesson the developer took from Localthunk’s massively successful game: as the entire roguelike setup feels like it takes everything about its inspiration and reworks it so it fits this deck-building deckbuilder perfectly.
Fame or Folly really feels like if the card game Dominion had been made into a single-player experience and mixed with roguelike elements to ensure that ‘one more run’ feeling with each and every game you play. I’m usually not a fan when games are described as ‘this game meets this game’, but Dominion x Balatro just tickles my brain in all the right ways.
All of that would mean very little if the presentation weren’t on point. We’ve seen many hidden gems with the most addictive gameplay you could imagine fall by the wayside because their presentation could not match their systems, sadly. No need to worry about that in Fame or Folly, as the pixel art is glorious, with the card art in particular being a standout. Audio design is also a big plus, with the game making all the right ‘number go up’ noises you could want.
The only real issues I had in my time with this preview build were bugs that are definitely being sorted out for the full release. Things like buying a recruitment pack, only for there not being any cards to recruit, or other items in the shop just not even responding to my inputs, were a bit of a shame, as I ran out of the necessary cards to keep building up my score for each next level. I haven’t been able to complete a run because of this, despite getting the hang of the game pretty quickly. But like I said, this is something that I just know will be patched out of this early build, hopefully in time for the release of the public demo in early May.
Fame or Folly is one of the best roguelike deckbuilders I’ve played in a while and could easily become as great as the likes of Balatro. I won’t compare it to something like Slay the Spire, as its gameplay is just too different from Megacrit’s epic to really make any comparison, but the fact that the game made me think of doing so should tell you a lot. The potential here is insane.
The game is scheduled to come out in Q3 of this year, and so far it seems like it will be PC-only. Fingers crossed that the game will be successful enough to see console ports and maybe even a mobile port, as I feel like it will do well on portable devices. Because yeah, this game will be a time sink.
I really believe Fame or Folly could be another huge surprise indie hit. It takes all of the right lessons from Balatro’s gameplay while being its own thing. Inspired by physical deckbuilding games, you get this really addicting hook of creating your own prestige-generating machine. Snatch up new cards and get rid of those you don’t need in a fast-paced, strategically deep card game that will leave you craving more with each run. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need some more time with this demo. For further preview reasons, obviously, not because it just has its hooks in me. No, YOU’RE addicted.
Fame or Folly is due to be released on Steam in Q3 2026. Visit here to put it on your wishlist.
Since our preview went live, we’ve been informed that the bugs we encountered have been patched out so you should have a much smoother experience in these areas now.
