Pocketpair Publishing Lead Calls Combolands a 2026 Indie Standout

Combolands, a small-scale roguelike citybuilder from the two-person team at Crux Games, has received an enthusiastic recommendation from John Buckley, Pocketpair's head of publishing. Buckley described the Steam game as potentially one of 2026's best independent releases and said it has delivered the strongest sense of compulsive play he has experienced since Balatro.

The praise arrives in the same year as Palworld's 1.0 launch, a milestone for Pocketpair that naturally puts attention on the company's own work. But Buckley used his social-media post to direct that attention toward a much smaller project. He encouraged people to try Combolands even if its blend of genres does not initially sound like their usual kind of game, calling it a "10/10" and suggesting it could be the best indie title of the year in his view.

That is a notably forceful endorsement for a game operating on a radically different scale from Palworld. Combolands is made by a two-person developer, while Pocketpair is an established developer and publisher with roughly 100 employees. The games also have little in common mechanically. Where Palworld is a large-scale creature-collecting survival game, Combolands focuses on concise strategy runs built around city placement, economic growth, and escalating combinations.

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A citybuilder designed for short, repeatable runs

Crux Games describes Combolands as a mini citybuilding roguelike. Players construct a tiny settlement by placing buildings, seeking out productive interactions between them, and turning those interactions into increasingly valuable chains. The stated aim is to transform a modest early settlement into a flourishing metropolis and economy, but it does so in much shorter sessions than a conventional citybuilding game.

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Each run is designed around decisions with immediate and longer-term consequences. A building placement can open a new synergy, improve another part of the town, or set up a larger cascade later. That emphasis on adjacency, planning, and multipliers gives the game a familiar appeal for players who enjoy watching a carefully prepared strategy suddenly generate a huge payoff.

Crux Games has positioned the game as a hybrid of roguelike, deckbuilding, and citybuilding ideas. Rather than treating those labels as separate modes, Combolands uses them to support the central loop of making choices, unlocking options, and shaping a new settlement run by run. Guilds are among the elements that can be unlocked as players progress, and each is said to bring its own mix of benefits and drawbacks.

The developer has described the resulting experience as offering substantial strategic depth alongside the satisfying "number-go-up" feeling associated with score-chasing, engine-building games. Runs are intended to last around 30 minutes, which may be an important part of the game's appeal. It gives players enough time to establish an economy and discover a powerful combination without demanding the extended commitment often associated with broader city simulators.

Why the Balatro comparison matters

Buckley's comparison to Balatro is not a claim that Combolands plays like the poker-themed roguelike. Instead, it points to the kind of momentum that can emerge from systems built around combinations and repeated experimentation. Balatro became widely known for turning relatively understandable rules into an endlessly replayable pursuit of stronger synergies, bigger totals, and surprising build paths.

Combolands appears to seek a similarly accessible but expandable structure through buildings and urban development. The player is not merely laying out a town for visual effect. They are trying to identify relationships between pieces, capitalize on available bonuses, and make decisions that will improve future possibilities. A successful chain can create the kind of escalating reward that makes a player want to start another run immediately after finishing the last.

That is also why Buckley's recommendation specifically reaches beyond established fans of roguelikes and deckbuilders. These genres can appear intimidating to players who associate them with dense item pools, punishing resets, or elaborate rules. Yet a game centered on a small city and short sessions may offer a more approachable entry point, especially if its early building choices clearly communicate how a run is developing.

The citybuilding framework may also help distinguish Combolands from more traditional card-focused roguelikes. Even though deckbuilding influences are part of its design, the visible settlement gives each decision a spatial quality. Players can watch their plans take shape as a town, while the underlying strategy remains focused on securing useful synergies and avoiding choices that undermine a developing build.

Steam players are responding positively

Buckley is not alone in responding favorably. At the time of the praise, 97% of Combolands reviews on Steam were positive, giving the game the platform's Overwhelmingly Positive user-review designation. For a small independent project, that response is a meaningful sign that the core loop is connecting with a substantial share of its audience.

User-review labels never settle whether a game will appeal to every player, especially in a genre blend that depends heavily on personal taste. Some players may want a larger city simulator with more elaborate construction, while others may prefer a roguelike that places combat or character progression at its center. Combolands is explicitly oriented around compact sessions and strategic building combinations, so its appeal is likely strongest for players interested in mastering a focused system.

Still, the volume of positive sentiment supports the central point of Buckley's post: the game is earning attention despite its low profile. Small teams frequently face a difficult visibility problem on Steam, where even inventive releases can struggle to reach players beyond their initial audience. Word-of-mouth support from developers, publishers, and prominent players can be especially valuable for games whose strengths become clearer once someone actually sits down for a run.

Combolands' strong rating also highlights the continuing appetite for smaller games that deliver a concentrated mechanical idea rather than attempting to compete directly with massive live-service releases or sprawling open worlds. A tightly designed 30-minute run can fit into a very different part of a player's routine. It can be a quick evening session, a repeatable challenge, or a game kept installed specifically for the urge to solve one more strategic puzzle.

Indie games do not need to compete on the same scale

It would be misleading to frame Combolands and Palworld as direct rivals simply because both sit under the broad umbrella of independent games. Their budgets, team sizes, structures, and ambitions are vastly different. Palworld's 1.0 release represents the continued development of a major survival game from a much larger organization, while Combolands is a focused project created by just two developers.

But Buckley's enthusiasm is still useful as a reminder that the indie space is not one category of game. It includes projects of very different sizes, from breakout hits with huge player populations to narrowly focused strategy experiments made by tiny teams. Success can mean a global launch for one game and a highly positive reception from a dedicated Steam audience for another.

Support between developers matters in that environment. A recommendation from someone attached to a highly visible game can help bring new eyes to a project that might otherwise be discovered only by players already browsing for roguelikes, deckbuilders, or citybuilders. More importantly, it highlights the work itself: a compact design that seems to be winning people over through its combination-driven play rather than through sheer scale.

What makes Combolands worth watching

For players who enjoy building efficient systems, Combolands' premise is easy to understand. Place buildings, discover how they work together, unlock new possibilities, and attempt to build a stronger economy each time. The roguelike structure promises variety and replayability, while the citybuilding theme gives the system a tangible identity.

For those who usually avoid roguelikes or deckbuilders, Buckley's message is perhaps the most interesting part of the discussion. His recommendation is deliberately aimed at people who assume the game may not be for them. That does not guarantee every genre skeptic will connect with it, but it suggests the game's satisfaction may come less from genre familiarity than from the universal pleasure of seeing a well-laid plan produce an unexpectedly large result.

With an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam rating and a growing profile following Buckley's endorsement, Combolands is becoming one of the smaller 2026 releases worth keeping on the radar. Its ambitions are compact, but its systems appear designed to make each short run feel consequential. For anyone looking for a strategy game that turns city planning into a fast, repeatable chase for the next great combo, that may be exactly the point.