Issue No. 84 · Thursday edition · Brisbane, QLD
Every Thursday our three editors sit down with the week's most interesting joker-driven casual games — card puzzlers, merge boards, runners — and rate what actually deserves your tram ride home. No scores for hype. No coverage you can buy.
A runner that loops back on itself: every lap, the track keeps your mistakes as obstacles. The jester's cartwheel dodge is the most satisfying single input we have tested this year, and sessions land neatly under four minutes.
Full review →
Merge bells into caps, caps into full motley. The twist: a wandering joker tile refuses to merge until you trap it in a corner, turning every board into a small herding puzzle. Clever, calm and generous with its hints.
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Build a royal court one card at a time while the jester reassigns one courtier's role each round. It reads like solitaire, plays like light chess, and looks like a storybook. The 60-level campaign never repeats a gimmick.
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Cards shuffle beneath your feet mid-jump, so the platform you aimed for may be a different suit when you land. Thrilling in short bursts, though the late levels lean harder on reflexes than the charming first hour suggests.
Full review →
A pairs game where matched jesters tell one half of a joke each — find the punchline pair to hear it land. Genuinely funny writing, and the two-player pass-the-phone mode is the best family filler we have reviewed this winter.
Full review →"Jester Loop understands something most runners forget: a wild card should change the rules, not just the scenery."— Priya N., Reviews Editor
"I have finished Court of Cards twice and I am still finding courtier combinations the tutorial never mentioned."— Callum R., Deputy Editor
"If a game hides its best ideas behind a timer, it does not make the issue. Simple as that."— Margot D., Editor-in-Chief
Wildcard Weekly rates every game out of ten, and the number is earned the slow way: each title is played by at least two editors for a combined minimum of twelve hours before a word is written. We weight our verdict towards the thing this publication exists for — how much the wild card actually matters.
| What we judge | Share | The question we ask |
|---|---|---|
| Wild-card design | 40% | Would the game collapse without its joker? |
| Respect for your time | 25% | Does a session fit between two bus stops? |
| Craft | 20% | Art, sound and writing that earn their place |
| Fairness | 15% | Progress comes from play, nothing else |
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