Ben’s Indie Game of the Year 2024: Balatro

There’s really no argument here for me. As someone who has spent countless hours playing poker, blackjack, palace, rummy, solitaire, you name it, all to entertain myself and friends during school and college, the nature of a poker-based roguelike was a very dangerous idea for me. And boy did notBalatro disappoint on this front.

Designed by a one-man team, this game took the timeless and easy rules of poker and twisted it into a twisted, maniacally-addictive and engaging roguelike where one game is never enough. The strategy and deck-building systems combined with the brute luck of the draw that playing cards have always presented ensured that Balatro never felt repetitive or boring and managed to make hours feel like minutes.

It is the perfect storm of entertaining elements, a clear example of how refined gameplay is the most important part of the interactive entertainment medium. Sure, flashy and realistic graphics are cool, and immense scale and size are useful for making a game feel more full than it actually is, but Balatro proves with effortless ease that simplistic gameplay trumps all of this. LocalThunk had a clear and distinct vision of what Balatro should be and delivered it with such class and quality that there was never any need or desire or desire for Balatro to be more than what it is. It is truly a perfect evolution of the poker ruleset and at the same time one of the most immersive and enjoyable roguelikes I have experienced.

There’s not much that Balatro did badly, but perhaps one of the strongest elements of this game is also how consumer-friendly it is. You can play Balatro almost anywhere, on more platforms than most games and at a price cheaper than a few pints at a local Wetherspoons. This is one of the few games that I would recommend to almost anyone, regardless of their interest in roguelikes, deck-building, card games or video games as a whole, and it is partly for this reason, combined with what I mentioned above, that Balatro is absolutely my best indie game of 2024, and if there was an award for it, probably also my runner-up for the Game of the Year of 2024.