#4: Balatro

Poker sims have been a stalwart of gaming for as long as I can remember, going back as far as those pixelated demos on magazine coverdiscs for Deluxe Strip Poker II. Almost none have been worth playing, not least because CPU players are incapable of understanding the game and playing it with anything resembling human skill or behavior. It turns out the solution was hiding all along: change all the rules and make it about cheating.

I think it’s indicative of just what a major impact Balatro has had that it feels so much like a game I’ve been playing forever that I have checked at least three times to be sure it should be on this list. Surely it at least came out in 2023! But no, its triumphant release was indeed in February of 2024, and it’s certainly been the one game I’ve come back to most frequently since.

Balatro takes the rogue-ish elements of a deckbuilder like Slay the Spire, but puts them into a deck made up of traditional playing cards, eschewing all the usual dressings of a fantasy setting. It’s poker rules, kinda, except where in the right conditions you can make a straight with just four cards and that skips over a number. Or the much-coveted five-of-a-kind.

Something that most interests me about Balatro is how—aside from wrinkles introduced by the numerous rule-changing Jokers that can be found—the main adjustment that’s made to your game between attempts is within you, rather than via a tweaked deck. You get better at it. You develop new tactics and approaches, adapting on the fly based on the opportunities that come your way on any given run, and inevitably grow more skilful. That’s so much more rewarding than the game essentially getting easier because of unlocks you added, as is often the case in this genre.

It’s also stupidly clicky, and the “one more go” factor registers dangerously high. It’s such a pleasure that what could have been a minor indie hit has instead gone on to become one of the most popular games of 2024. — John Walker