Very well could be the best indie game of 2024

Certainly the best deckbuilder I've ever played.

Surprisingly deep, strategic, satisfying, and horrendously addictive.

I've had to let this one stew for a bit, honestly.

I picked it up for myself as a late birthday present out of curiosity more than anything. I'd heard a lot of unflattering comparisons to Vampire Survivors (a game I very much despise) and clicker games (which I also despise! Wow, patterns!) which had put me on edge, so I was a little surprised to find out that none of those comparisons are apt.

I can understand being skeeved out by the direct usage of Poker iconography and terminology on display, but the truth that's apparent to me is that Balatro is ultimately another roguelike deckbuilder. You match symbols together, try to play to synergies, and pray for one of your random drops/powerups to be the one that enables a certain playstyle or tactics. If anything, despite my relative apathy towards deckbuilders (I play YGO, so slapping a roguelite aspect on just repels me) I admire this game for its honesty and relative lack of illusions.

Still, I find myself in an odd position.

Despite admiring it, I'm not really smitten with it.

One of those games where I can see why it's considered a mindmelting trap for people with ADHD, but I personally don't get much out of it. Would honestly rather play Suika Game. Incremental micro-unlocks and "pick one of 3" powerups and glorified slot machines in the form of card packs don't really enthuse me.

At a base level, the basest of all levels, I do think the mechanics are somewhat engaging despite the simplicity and comparison to blackjack more than poker. Compared to its contemporaries I also think it has infinitely more impactful decision making, especially with how finite money is and how little shops actually offer.
But Balatro - and indeed, nearly the entire roguelite genre - has an awful habit of playing their entire mechanical hand early on and then hoping it's enough to hook you. While it works for some games (Isaac, FTL, Dead Cells, Synthetik) I don't find it works so well for deckbuilders. There aren't enough interesting twists on the core mechanics for me to want to keep playing, and if anything its iconographical honesty might actually make it worse.

Sure, the game is addictive, but I'm older now dude. I creak when I wake up, I say "Mmm scrumptious" when I buy a pastry from Greggs, I tend a garden, I play Granblue Fantasy, I've got an inanimate object I collect.

'Addictive' is no longer enough to satisfy me. Life is addictive, pastries are addictive, math is addictive, the world I live in is addictive.

[Semi-related ramble that I was gonna post as a comment on someone else's Balatro review before remembering I don't like to barge into other people's posts and go "Nuh uh".]

I so direly wish higher profile indie games would have a design core that isn't just "addictive". Having seen roguelites come into existence over a decade ago, it feels like every other popular indie game is trying to make players chase the same kind of high that Binding of Isaac or FTL did all those years ago. In turn, they miss out on just being good games at their core.

Fucked up that Hitman: Freelancer is the best of these games I've played in years, and it was free DLC.

Stealing this joke from another person:

Describing a Balatro run to someone who’s never played has the same energy as summarizing the plot of homestuck to someone who’s never read.

Glad to be a sicko, 10/10, perfect game

Alright let's get some Balatro thoughts down, since I doubt I'll return to it. I put in 20-30 hours and completed up through orange stake, but not gold. Didn't mess with the challenges much but they seemed fun. For me, this is a really well-designed, fun and addictive rogue-like/lite/who cares (I know there are people who care about the like/lite distinction, but I sure don't, sorry). Like most rogue-likes (all that I've played), there's never really a satisfying ending, I just play and play more and more runs, and everything in the game slowly becomes more and more routine and less novel. Eventually the fun wears away and so I just unceremoniously end my session one day and never pick it back up. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with some games working like this, but it does make it so by the time I'm through with it my opinion has soured a little since I've played it until I'm burnt out and not enjoying it anymore. I end up quitting rogue-likes sooner than I used to do that I can avoid that feeling, I wasn't truly burnt out on Balatro, but I was starting to see the signs, IE: I didn't want to play out my run if I didn't get the upgrades I wanted right away, I preferred to just restart.

Anyway, if you're on this website reading this, you probably already know what Balatro is and why people like it, so I'll just say, yeah they're right, it's a well designed game. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Now that Balatro's latest patch fixed the one issue I had with the game - that the final two stake difficulty modifiers were completely antithetical to the game's design - this is effectively now an all-time great video game (and my GOTY so far). Huge kudos to LocalThunk; what he's created here is absolutely amazing. It sounds like he wants to add more to Balatro without bloating the game, which is the right move in my opinion. Based on the exceptionally well-tuned patch changes and how he clearly has his finger on the pulse of the community, I have no doubt in my mind that the game's future is in good hands.

Ballin'tro

I'd staved off a review of Balatro until I'd become victorious and completed a run. Many months and eleven hours of gameplay later I have finally notched my first victory... and boy was it worth it.

Balatro is a poker-based roguelike in which the player is tasked with making their way through eight antes (tiers,) three rounds each, in which they must clear an arbitrary chip count to proceed. To do this, you must take advantage of the rules of Poker and a plethora of accents and boons given to you through chance in the form of Jokers (accent cards that alter multipliers and round scoring,) planets (which create multipliers based upon which hand is played,) tarot cards (consumables that accent certain played cards,) and more. The benefit of this game entrenching itself within Poker is that it's a game that is already engrained in the minds of (most) of its player base. Poker is such a ubiquitous experience to most Americans that jumping into Balatro and its ruleset felt like second nature, making the learning of its tertiary mechanics much easier to parse.

It took some time (clearly) to finagle myself into creating decks that worked for me. At first I tried decks and bought into jokers that accented pairs and the chip gain I could get from playing these in quick succession. I tinkered with straights and flushes a little more before I realized I wasn't doing too hot with the assembly and heightened RNG required in suits that required more cards. I returned once again with a fresh mind into the pair based deck, stubbornly telling myself that I would find victory with two cards played at a time. I lost again and again, but I was getting smarter and going further. I understood the necessity of holding certain cards to heighten their sell value and discarding when I ultimately didn't need to, to boon jokers that gave me a higher multiplier if the lowest card in my hand was higher. Of course as you play more and get further in the ante's, Balatro rewards you with newer jokers, tarot cards, and vouchers that will make subsequent runs (likely) more successful. I kept at it, frustratingly losing even more in the sixth and seventh ante's. I ran into "The Needle," a stipulation that requires a player to clear the certain chip count in one single hand or else they will meet failure, a furious amount of times. Eventually I lucked out and was able to bypass The Needle on my sixth ante through some clever strategizing, and I knew I was in the clear en route to victory. After all this time I cleared the eighth and ante and felt qualified to write a review.

Balatro is a vindicating and involved roguelike that uses a familiar DNA to make a captivating game. The feel of the game's UI and playable experience is seamless, cards floating as you select them and everything snapping in the way that it should to make for a crisp and quick gaming experience that you will want to come back to. I eagerly await my next victory in Balatro... but it may have to come some time down the line when I feel more confident in attempting different decks and hand strategies. I heavily recommend Balatro to fans of roguelikes or for folks looking for a game that will be a good time spender throughout the year. I can't believe that this is the game going head-to-head with Persona 3 Reload as my GOTY so far and not FFVII Rebirth, but here we are.