When I reflect back on 2024, I don’t think of a standout year for gaming – certainly not as good as 2022 or 2023. On one hand, I do think it’s a great year full of solid titles. Tekken 8, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Persona 3 Reload, UFO 50, the list goes on. On the other hand, there hasn’t been a game that I played this year that, after dozens of hours, made me go “yeah, this is probably gonna be my Game of the Year” like Elden Ring or Baldur’s Gate 3. Well, that was until I played Balatro.
I had Balatro on my radar (and Steam library) the entire year but for some reason, it eluded me. Last week, Geoff Keighley announced the nominees for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024 which included the usual suspects – a critically acclaimed Final Fantasy game, another Atlus masterpiece with a soundtrack that instantly got added to my playlist, and that wild card nomination about a monkey fighting gods. Amid the big-budget challengers, there sat Balatro, an indie roguelike deck-building card game made by a single developer. Curiouser and curiouser.
Last week, I finally booted it up. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but daylight turned to evening and 5 hours later, I was floored. In the span of 3-4 days, I sunk over 30 hours into Balatro. I’ll probably sink another 30 more by the time you read this. So what exactly is Balatro and why am I sitting here, telling you that this is the best game I’ve played all year?
On the surface, Balatro is a poker-themed roguelike deck-building card game where players must create poker hands to beat increasingly high scores called Blinds. Simple enough, except the fun lies in how you can augment your poker hands with multipliers like Planet cards or over 100 Jokers that all have unique gameplay-changing buffs or debuffs. Like any good roguelike, you reset your run if you can’t beat the Blind, usually carrying over progress by unlocking new power cards for the next run.
That’s just the basic outline of Balatro but mechanically, it goes much, much deeper than that when you factor in things like Tarot cards, Planet cards, polychrome and glass cards, poker hand types and deck synergy. That’s where the all-important Jokers can make or break your run because you can mix-and-match them to build off of each other with multipliers, leading to crazy high scores in the millions (or trillions, as some have reached).
In the end, it boils down to a very simple winning factor: big numbers go brrrr and you get instant, immense satisfaction. You get to feel like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind once you line up a deadly combination of multipliers and enhanced cards, then harmonise those values to drop the mathematical equivalent of an exploding supervolcano. The combinations you have at your disposal are quite literally endless – Balatro creates an infinitely replayable experience and it’s a game that actually means it, for once.
Since The Game Awards nominations were announced, there’s been more discussion online about Balatro than any of the other nominees, ranging from people vehemently defending its placement in Game of the Year to confused commenters wondering why an indie card game is trading blows with the likes of Metaphor: ReFantazio and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. After experiencing it first-hand, I’m here to tell you that it absolutely earns its accolades as one of the best games of the year.
Will it actually win Game of the Year? Who knows. The odds aren’t exactly stacked in its favour with the other titanic nominations showing wider appeal. If my rambling adds anything to the conversation, I really hope that more people give Balatro a fair chance to make its case. It’s 90% luck, 10% skill and 100% reason to remember the name.
You can pick it up on Steam for as little as R145 or on the PlayStation Store for R299. It’s also available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch and mobile.
