BAZR

Health is a currency is one of the biggest lessons I took out of Slay the Spire (the gold standard for deckbuilder roguelikes and game that I was recommended once by someone in an interview for a non-game related position - and I was the interviewer).

In contrast to most RPGs with good public healthcare (this was meant to be a joke but I just played Dragon Quarter and healing in that game is decidedly Not Free), where health is more like a fuel gauge (topped up at all times), Slay the Spire demands that you know when and how to spend your health as if it was a more traditional consumable or currency (of which you also have to plan carefully).

Maintaining health is good, but at the end of the day, finishing with 1 HP is as good as finishing with 100 - so know when to use it and when to prioritize other opportunities over it.

BAZR, a Mario 64 romhack, purports to be a deckbuilder roguelike featuring Vivian from Paper Mario, May from Guilty Gear, and the presumed witch OC of the author - and it certainly is - but more interestingly it is a hack that locks down Mario 64's freedom and turns into currency.

And I love it for that.

The overall goal of BAZR (presumably pronounced BAZR, the same way as Balatro) is to collect 16 stars and then run through all 3 Bowser levels, without running out of your 3 lives, but there are some very interesting and extremely tight constraints placed on this framework.

Primarily, you have four 'action' slots that replace the controls on the B, A, Z, and R buttons (hence the title), with each slot being dealt a card from your action deck. Actions range from traditional (jump, long jump, kick) to extreme (instant blj, random teleport) and unexpected (a rocket jump that damages you, may's dolphin), and each one has a finite number of uses.

Once a card's uses are all used up, it's discarded and another card takes its place. There is a fifth slot for 'passive' cards (instantly set when drawn from your deck) that allows for more game design space - providing things like floaty Luigi physics, an inability to go beyond walking speed, or the ability to run up walls.

Crucially, once all the cards in your deck are gone, Mario simply dies.

This turns a funny 'whose A button is it anyway' gimmick into a battle of absolute conservation, where simply getting to the top of Bob-Omb Battlefield requires careful counting and rationing of jumps. In this game, we are all pannenkoeks.

It's a really interesting reframing of Mario 64, a game I'm happy to be decently familiar with (at the '1 hour 16-star speedrun' level), and one that forces you to really understand how to approach stars.

Doubly so because farming coins in levels is very helpful in enabling you to buy and upgrade cards, thus obtaining desperately-needed mobility options (one reason that a custom-redesigned Wet-Dry World is actually easier to start on than Bob-Omb Battlefield!).

... And triply so because each level has a 'par time' for each star (as a anti-grinding mechanic), taxing those who are likely to get lost in Tick Tock Clock heavily.

... And *quadruply* so because Mario is assigned a random level to challenge, and remains on that level until he pays money to reroll that level (the cost decreases as the stars on that level get mined out, a soft encouragement to not just immediately bail on Rainbow Ride... but I will anyway.).

Jumps are the currency you need to navigate the level, coins are the currency you need to get more jumps, time is the currency you need to get more coins, and your knowledge of the levels of Mario 64 is the currency you need to make sure you don't screw yourself over.

Quitting out of a level once you're inside is a decent-sized penalty, which led me to start mentally routing in ways that sounded like 'I'm going to try to get to the island in Bob-Omb Battlefield, but in case my draws are bad, I want to keep enough cards to be able to beat Koopa the Quick'. It's truly a new way of thinking.

BAZR is also a bonafide deckbuilder roguelike because beating my first run took like 8 hours of attempts and felt absolutely exhilarating, and then all the subsequent attempts I did were mostly either too broken (in my favor) or too torturous (against my favor).

There are no 'heat level' difficulty options, so to speak, but there are about a dozen decks to unlock (though no particularly unique cards, just preset configurations) and some are definitely easier than others. (Notably, the Mario deck, the one you're stuck with until you win the first time, is definitely not the easiest of the Mario cast!)

My quick tips for making the lightest work possible of BAZR are roughly:

1) Farming money is key. If you can build a combo of cards that lets you play the 'get 10 cards' card repeatedly per level, it will math out in your favor and the game will become a rote exercise in just playing normal Mario 64. (it's less fun! but you will win!)

2) You can never have enough jumps. Upgrading your initial jump cards is cheap and provides a lot of extra breathing room. Get all the different weird kinds of jumps (also note that long jump cannot be chained into a lot of good mobility cards!)

3) Wet-Dry World is the easiest opening level. Bob-Omb Battlefield and Dire Dire Docks very friendly once you get a few cards, and after that, sweep up a few stars from whatever comes your way.

I really highly recommend BAZR if you're about as much of a Mario 64 person as I am. The barrier feels really high to start, but rewiring how I approached Mario 64 felt really fresh and taught me even more cursed 3D platformer knowledge (did you know you can beat the Boos in the haunted merry-go-round without jumping by just running up the wedge in the center and sliding down?).

The hack really feels like it has a lot of care put into it, from the redesigns of Peach's Castle and the water levels (water has New and Fun behavior here, for Reasons), the just-about-right feeling of game balance for the Mario Deck, and just the overall presentation (including an implementation of Five Card Monty hosted by... well.).

My favorite thing I'd like to call out is the very strong readability of each card - the card art is an eclectic mix of artstyles and memes, but I don't think it's a coincidence that each one is easy to tell apart at a glance, which is really important when you've rocketed yourself like 50 Marios high up Tall Tall Mountain and need to find what button deploys Instant Cloud Platform as fast as possible.

ok what's with the bowser deck tho

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