With the expansive popularity of video games in this day and age, it’s become easier for indie developers to find an audience for their niche creations. However, every once in a while, an indie game will come out of nowhere and take the gaming world by storm. “Balatro,” a poker-roguelike scoring game developed by Local Thunk, is a strong candidate for being that game.
“Balatro” was released in February of 2024, but its immense popularity and replay value have carried it into the sphere of relevance in 2025. If you’ve been on TikTok or Instagram, you’ve likely seen video game accounts and digital news outlets talking about it. It won the “Game Award for Best Independent Game” and was a strong contender to win “Game of the Year.”
What even is a Poker-Roguelike?
For many, the initial impression of “Balatro” was that it was a rather confusing premise.
“I thought it was a really confusing and a weird concept for a game,” said Cyrus Lariz, a “Balatro” player.
The idea in the most simple terms is that poker hands are played to earn chips, and those chips are required to complete rounds, or “antes.” The chip goal increases with every round, so boosts in the forms of stronger cards, higher levels for poker hands, and the ensemble of joker cards help to boost chip earnings. The ultimate goal is to improve with every single run, unlocking more cards, jokers, and finding a strategy through the chaos. This is where the Roguelike element of the game comes in. Everyone is encouraged to find a play-style or strategy that they like to run. Some people prefer flushes, others build a perfect deck for a flush five every time.
The poker element of course, is in the hands and deck of cards that you use in the game. There are no microtransactions in the game, you don’t even pay anything after buying the base game. However, the “poker” element of the game has led to some controversy. In the E.U., “Balatro” was given a PEGI-18 rating (M rating equivalent in the United States) for “promoting gambling.” It was not until recent months that the game was dropped down to a PEGI-12 rating (E+11 equivalent in the United States).
Learning to Love the Struggle
The loop of “Balatro” boils down to starting a run, picking up some jokers, and most likely losing to the fourth or fifth ante. From there, you unlock more boosters to improve your game. And then you repeat the cycle. Funnily enough, the repetition isn’t a flaw of the game, it’s a challenge. After every run, you’re motivated to reach new limits, to break records of chip gains, to try new strategies. The increase in difficulty from ante to ante is significant when you first start out. It will seem impossible to win at times, but that is exactly why you keep on replaying, keep on mixing up the order to find a solution. There is nothing more rewarding than beating the final boss blind after struggling for hours on end.
“It became very clear to me and transparent to understand,” adds Lariz. “The game defines its own place in the roguelike space and excels in what it does.”
Final Thoughts
However the idea for “Balatro” came to be, there is no denying that it has been executed in spectacular fashion. The infectious game-play loop makes it easy to jump from run to run, and the huge list of things to unlock will have completionists grinding to unlock every last item. In short, “Balatro” is a very good game, and it’s worth a try for anyone even remotely interested in it.
