What launched quietly as a crafty little indie card game from LocalThunk on Steam on 20 February 2024 rapidly exploded into one of the biggest games of the year – arguably, the biggest. Costing a mere $12.99 at full price, players around the world have been hypnotized into spending even 100 hours trying to beat the roguelike deck-builder.
Now, with game awards shortlists being released and the game has a devout following that’s even helped the title bleed into mainstream news articles, it looks primed to put in one of the best indie game showings ever. For the 2024 Golden Joystick Awards alone it landed three nominations! So, what’s made Balatro so big, and what’s made it so endearing?
It’s Poker, But Different
Balatro leans on poker for its core gameplay, which automatically endears it to people around the world. By its very nature, poker is a clear-cut and simple game to grasp, but because of the decisions that you make along the way, it has a high skill curve. It’s why the classic card game remains so popular, with players around the world seeking the best mobile poker apps to take on others through savvy plays and bluffs. These apps offer the high-level play one expects from poker in an accessible and portable format.
From PC, Balatro is now available on all platforms, with it being especially fun to play on the Nintendo Switch and smartphones because of its touch-screen interface. Similarly to mobile poker games, being playable through a touch-screen just helps to make the experience all the more interactive, accessible, and enjoyable. This is particularly because of how you play the game.
You start a round with a hand of cards, and from it, you need to play poker hands that score you points. Each round has a set count of points you need to make within the given cap of hands played and rounds of discards. From there, you use your winnings to buy Jokers and other power-ups that let you score more points with associated poker hands. As you go, the points requirement increases, and if you lose, you start again from scratch.
Everyone Loves to Back a Great Indie
The success of Balatro has clearly caught its creator, LocalThunk, by surprise, but they’ve taken it in their stride and gone out of their way to make the game even more endearing to the gaming world. A series of collaborations and updates have both added even more variety to the core game and promoted other developers, like those behind Dave the Diver, Vampire Survivors, and Stardew Valley.
Further, now being an authority on creating hit indie games and mastering the blend of compelling loop with simple and accessible gameplay, LocalThunk has also been keen to highlight other great indies that play into similar arenas. In October, they emphatically recommended Ballionaire, a pachinko roguelike, as the next time-munching game to get into.
Throughout the many interviews, comments, and posts put out by Balatro’s creator, fans have only become more endeared to the game and developer. They’ve even said that they have a hard time completing Balatro – which, anyone who has unlocked all of the decks through to the Blue Stake challenge, will know is tough – and that they just made another 30 Jokers for the game in defiance of the original plan to have 120.
Balatro is the indie hit of 2024 and deserves as many awards as it can get – and then some. Hopefully, this will lead to the developer creating more great games and other indie devs putting their novel spins on the popular roguelike formula.
