Balatro

Balatro is an incredible roguelike with a unique poker theme that helps it shine above its competitors, especially on Steam Deck.

It will be very difficult to find a game I have enjoyed exploring more than Balatro this year. Learning its mechanics were like learning a new language and it was all-encompassing. Balatro should be the design template going forward for many designers, it contains 0% fat and is trimmed to perfection. Not a pixel or mechanic is wasted in this immensely addictive roguelike. Bravo to all involved.

Wielding nothing more than a deck of cards and a poker-themed twist on proceedings, developer LocalThunk has conjured something incredible and awe-inspiring with Balatro. What starts as a relatively-novel twist on the deckbuilding format quickly blossoms into an experience that's equal parts methodical, experimental, chaotic but satisfying all the same. A game that rewards clever thinking, mathematical meddling and having the courage to be just that bit braver in uncovering just how far one can push its systems at play. Wherein success and failure alike stand as equally memorable moments to bu...

This poker-themed roguelike deckbuilder revels in the thrill of cheating.

To put it in terms as simple as the game itself, Balatro is the best deckbuilding roguelike I've played. And I've played as many as there are cards in a deck (almost).

No two games of Balatro are ever the same, which is only one of the reasons why we love this poker roguelike so much. Sure, it’s annoying if your run doesn’t get off the ground — it’s easy to fail early on if you can’t get your hands on a good Joker. But when you’re in the swing of things, scoring tens of thousands with just one hand, you’ll feel like the most powerful card baron there ever was. Simple and devious, Balatro is, quite frankly, brilliant — and I’m going to be playing this for months to come.

Poker goes into the blender and emerges in fine form.

A clever roguelike card game about cheating your way to victory, Balatro is a generous and mesmeric take on poker with endless strategic possibilities.

Balatro's ingenious combination of poker and roguelite gameplay creates an intoxicating combination that's hard to pull away from.

Balatro is the clever marriage of card deck building and poker from developer Localthunk. Obviously, poker has the allure of high stakes strategy, luck, and competition and deck building has a similar draw that lasts past a current hand.

Monkey sees numbers go up, monkey happy. That’s Balatro in a nutshell. It has an incredibly addictive gameplay loop that manages to activate the same neurons that predatory gambling games and mobile trash love to prey on. The thing is, there’s nothing remotely predatory about Balatro. It’s just a rogue-lite card game with absolutely no stakes. Well, except for the sleep you might lose by playing it well past bedtime.

Balatro is an incredibly clever indie gem that uses the bones of regular poker to build an incredibly approachable and fiendishly addictive new experience. There's a wonderfully slick core to this one, building decks and taking on dealers as you add wild special cards and variables to your pack is trance-inducing stuff and, backed by a fantastically understated soundtrack and perfect visuals, it makes for one of the first proper, actual, absolute must-play games of 2024.