My favourite game of the year is a game where you just play poker. Not in a Red Dead Redemption way, where you can play poker and then go out of the bar to do quests, kill some guys, enjoy some voice acting. No. It’s just poker. Except of course, it isn’t. Balatro is more than just poker. It is a special and singular little game that has managed to completely consume my year.

When you boot Balatro up, it does appear unassuming. You are given a hand of cards and, over the course of a few more hands and discards, you are asked to score a set amount of chips. Typical poker rules apply, where a two pair is fine but if you can get something like a full house you’re going to get a much bigger score. Once you hit the blind, you are taken to a shop. Here is where Balatro starts to evolve. In the shop, you can buy Jokers, which will radically change the course of play. Some change the rules, such as cards which allow you to build a straight with a gap of one or with four cards, or perhaps a Joker that will treat Spades and Clubs, and Hearts and Diamonds as two interchangeable suits of black and red. Some however change your score. It might be more chips for playing face cards, a bonus for how long you go without playing your most frequent hand, perhaps a x3 multiplier for when you play your last hand. These Jokers that change your score are the key to making it through the escalating gauntlet of “blinds” (rounds) that make up the game.

These blinds themselves provide challenges, as on every third blind, you will be given an additional obstacle to overcome. Some are as simple as facing a bigger blind or only being able to play one hand, but some are potentially game ruining as they debuff all cards of a set suit or disable all Jokers until one is sold. If you’ve built your entire run around playing diamonds, a blind like that can ruin everything. Speaking of though, the shop doesn’t just offer Jokers. There are vouchers which offer long-term improvements to your run, as well as booster packs that can add cards to your deck, change the cards already in your deck or make certain hands more valuable. What this leads to is insane runs where depending on the random number generation (or RNG to the real losers) you could be picking up five of a kind on the ace of spades while holding Jokers that boost your score when playing aces and only having black suits in your hand. You will eventually break the game. That is how the game is designed and quite frankly, that imperfection of structure is the perfection of the game.

Everything I’m saying will sound crazy if you’ve not played or watched footage of Balatro. I admit, when I heard about it, I was confused too. But, where there can be strategic complexity, the face of the game is refreshingly simple. All areas of the screen are neatly segmented and overlaid with a CRT filter that gives an old school vibe to the game that the gameplay is also leaning into, which allow the personality on the Joker cards to pop. They are all given unique and fun designs that weirdly create a connection between them and the player. You’ll do a run of the game and see that Joker that got you your first win. A warm nostalgia spreads across your chest and you smile, picking the Joker again. This time you fully shit the bed and are out on ante 4. But what a face that Joker had. Crucially, the musical score for Balatro is also perfectly weighted, this endlessly looping track that never once got on my nerves throughout all my playthroughs. While I would often substitute it with a podcast or an album, playthroughs with the sound on were never grating. Those little noises as cards clock up extra points are so well judged too, little addictive bursts of pleasure to stimulate the brain. I would be remiss though if I failed to mention the fire effect in the game. Early in your time with Balatro, you will notice you get a score that causes the score boxes to set alight. This is what happens when you play a single hand so good it eclipses the entire blind. That is the high you will spend the rest of that run and every run forever after chasing, a small design decision that can itself be enough to sustain a gameplay loop around.

All of that would be enough. I have roguelikes that I have returned to frequently throughout the years that offer me no new content but retain that addictive gameplay hook, and Balatro would remain a great game if the same were true for it. The same is not true though. Balatro has a level of depth to it that makes returning to it frankly a necessity. There are more Jokers to unlock by playing in unusual ways, new decks that can completely change your playstyle and even a challenge mode, full of twenty hand crafted runs that are all intended to push the rugged Balatro player into doing something new yet again. Roguelikes often become a game of bashing your head against the wall, yet Balatro doesn’t stop at making it fun to hit your head against the wall. There are new ways to hit your head against the wall, new walls to hit your head against and new treats hiding behind the wall. You’ll have so much fun that you won’t realise you’ve given yourself concussion (for the sake of the metaphor, replace concussion with losing five hours of your life to Balatro that you could have put towards writing the next great American novel). People have managed to 100% Balatro but not without sacrificing hundreds of hours to it. Even without getting close to that feat, I can’t admit my playtime isn’t staggering.

Again, this all sounds like complete nonsense, so do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Balatro. It is on all consoles, PC, even your phone and you will not regret a single one of the (many) hours you lose to it. It is proof that not only is the indie gaming scene the most exciting facet of that industry right now, but also proof that even a genre as overextended as the roguelike still has plenty of juice to be squeezed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for another round. Dealer, I’m all in. Poker reference. Yeah.

Honourable Mentions:

Buckshot Roulette – If you thought Balatro didn’t go far enough in perverting an existing game and turning it into something new, may I present to you Buckshot Roulette, a game that boldly asks “what if you played Russian Roulette with a shotgun?” The vibes are rancid but undeniably compelling.

The Casting of Frank Stone – I’m always a sucker for Supermassive Games and their now classic playable movie style of gameplay, so another serving is always welcome. While Frank Stone falters a little with an ending that hews too close to Dead by Daylight to be fully satisfying as a standalone game, the journey getting there was one of their best yet.

TCG Card Shop Simulator – I always question if I can put a game in early access on this list, but seeing as I sunk 20 hours into this over four days, it feels wrong not to acknowledge that I have had and am continuing to have a blast with this game. There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day of being a manager and decompressing by playing a managerial sim.

Peglin – “What if Peggle was Slay the Spire?” is a pretty simple premise as far as they go, but then why hasn’t it happened until now? Though lacking the purity of either game, Peglin combines the two into a game I keep dipping back into.

UFO 50 – I can’t claim to have even scratched the surface of UFO 50, a densely packed and carefully curated compilation of 50 full-length retro games from fictional developer UFO Soft (but actually developed by Spelunky team Mossmouth.) From what I have already discovered though, this is a feat as vast as it is special, that I want to keep returning to all next year.

Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 – This is undeniably little more than a big dumb shooter game that failed to get me actually invested in the Warhammer universe. However, blasting and slashing through hordes of goons with a friend was a great time and I don’t think my time with it is yet done, a thought that does still excite me.