The surprise hit of 2024 was Balatro, a quirky little roguelike deck-builder that used standard playing cards combined with jokers with weird powers.
It also features a bunch of modifiers that make the game addictive, with scores starting in the hundreds but quickly reaching massive numbers—even beyond a trillion.
I have put about 90 hours into the game, and I know people who have progressed into the hundreds of hours trying to unlock every card, deck type, and stake.
It’s simple, but wildly profound if you want it to be. There’s nothing quite like it out there, but there are lots of games that hit on similar feelings, and some of them are game of the year contenders in their own right.
All of these games are on Steam, and the light nature of the games means many are also on older systems like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, as well as modern consoles and even other computer platforms.
Here are some games to try next if you love playing Balatro.
Editor’s note: All of the games on this list are traditional “Web2” games without crypto or blockchain integrations. But you might enjoy ’em anyway!
