Look to your left. Look to your right. One of those people is about to discover Balatro for the first time. The other has already been secretly playing it every spare moment they get.
Balatro was one of 2024’s early breakout hits on Steam. Its roguelike twist on traditional poker combined clever deckbuilding mechanics with an incredibly satisfying and click-y presentation. By the summer it seemed like the “just one more round” sensation may have peaked. It now feels like Balatro-pilling has just gotten started.
For anyone who hasn’t already played it, Balatro tasks players with using poker hands to score points. Players need to hit certain thresholds to progress, and earn gold for successful rounds that can then be spent on customizing their decks and acquiring powerful jokers that boost how their hands are scored in all kinds of ways. There’s no actual betting, but the constant risk-reward analysis required at every turn provides the stakes and tension associated with real games of chance.
After exploding back in February, Balatro’s second wave began in September. Developer LocalThunk brought the card game to mobile, which turned out to be a perfect platform for chasing rare jokers and high scores. App Magic reported that the game made $1 million in its first week, a small fortune for a $10 game in the App Store world of microtransaction- and ad-fueled free-to-play hits.
Then in November, Balatro scored multiple nominations at The Game Awards 2024, sending the whole thing into overdrive. It was represented not just in the best indie and mobile game categories, but in best direction and debut as well. It even snagged the most coveted prize of all, a 2024 GOTY nod, for five nominations in total. In a testament to both the impact of host Geoff Keighley’s awards show and how small Balatro’s footprint still was, tons of new players began to take notice.
Sales spiked on mobile, with Balatro reportedly raking in $4.4 million since it launched on smartphones and over $727,000 last week alone following the Game Awards 2024 nominees reveal earlier this month. The game has also seen a resurgence in its concurrent player counts on Steam, as well as thousands of fresh reviews on the Valve-owned storefront (where the game is also currently 15 percent off).
But Balatro is clearly on the move in the popular gamer conscience as well. A common encounter with the name from a newbie goes like this. Someone who has never heard of Balatro finds out about it. They think the game can’t possibly be that hype and then they give it a try. The next thing they know, it’s all they can think about. Fans new and old have taken to expressing this obsessive quality by posting explanation-less images of the game’s iconic joker face under any mention of the game on social media.
Possibly adding to the renewed zeitgeist around the game is a bit of reactionary controversy surrounding its official GOTY nomination. While some players have been griping about Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC getting a nomination instead of full games released this year like Stellar Blade or Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, others have been denigrating Balatro as “just a card game” or a shallow splash in the mobile pan.
It seems like a good bet that Balatro will win at least one prize at the Game Awards, which will raise its profile even further. And deservedly so. Balatro is a masterclass in how a game can get its hooks in a player and then never let go. It helps that LocalThunk has been prodigious with updates the last few months, adding crossovers with popular properties ranging from The Witcher 3 to Dave the Diver. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get at least a couple more before the year is out. Balatro cannot be stopped.
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