November 27, 2024

Recently, The Game Awards announced its nominees for their, well, game awards. Among the nominees, Balatro was nominated for a total of five awards, including Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, and Best Independent Game. Some people I’ve talked to, as well as some discourse online I’ve seen, didn’t even know what this game was before its Game Awards nominations. Today, I wanted to give my quick review of Balatro, and justify why I think it doesn’t just deserve the nominations for some of these categories, it deserves to win.

So, What is Balatro?

Balatro is roguelike poker card game where you play increasingly challenging, varied, and randomized rounds. While the first round may feel like a typical virtual poker game, it quickly changes when you access the shop. After each round, you gain in-game cash based on how you performed. With this cash, you can purchase a variety of items. The main game mechanic are called Jokers – cards that are always active and change the gameplay in some way. You can have up to five of these at a time, and they can do anything from adding a strong multiplier to your score to creating new cards, adding extra cash to your total, and so much more. There are other items to purchase, too, like extra cards to add to your standard 52-card deck, items to level-up stats in your run, or packs of cards that can feature a variety of useful items.

What starts as a pretty standard Poker simulator turns into a hectic, high-stakes game where the odds are really up to you. Everything about the game experience feels tailor-made to make things challenging and satisfying. The game effects like screen-shake and fire animations on your scores when you earn enough chips to win in one hand make winning feel great, and the challenging ‘Boss Blinds’ at the end of each Ante (or collection of a few rounds) have randomized challenges that can feel impossible at times to overcome. But, that means that when you do overcome them, it feels amazing.

Balatro’s Nominations

In my opinion, Balatro absolutely deserves all of its nominations. While which categories it should win is more subjective, Balatro is a great game that’s been a ton of fun to play. Balatro isn’t just a fun game, though. It has a lot of special elements that really make it unique (besides all of its fun, unique mechanics).

Firstly, it can’t be overlooked that this game was developed by just one person. This was an independent, solo project. That on its own is something to be commended, but a game with such great mechanics and amazing technical execution, it goes into mind-blowing territory.

Balatro offers a lot of content, too. To ‘win’ the game, you must clear 8 Antes, which basically means you need to finish eight rounds with challenging modifiers. But, this is really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of content. There is an endless mode, plenty of Jokers to unlock and discover, challenges, seeded routes, and so much more. On top of that, the core gameplay loop is just so satisfying that you’ll probably want to just hop back in anyways.

Balatro is really something special. And luckily, it’s on tons of different platforms. Mobile platforms, consoles, Mac, PC, there are so many different ways to get into it.

Balatro is one of those lucky games that’s about as rare as a great poker hand where you can sweep with one hand. If any of this sounds interesting to you, I’d suggest picking it up and giving it a go! I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and it’s supporting an independent creator.