Shacknews Game of the Year 2024 – Balatro

If you’ve been following our Shacknews Awards this year You may have noticed that Balatro is a regular. We probably don’t need to explain it now. It is a roguelike indie card game available on all current generation platforms. Including mobile phones It also won several Shacknews Awards this year, including Modojo @ Shacknews Mobile Game of the Year. Indie game of the year and Person of the Year (For LocalThunk developers) And that’s you. our employees and our extended team, Balatro, rose to the top in several events this year. And we’ve seen our Chatty and Cortex talk a lot about successful and failed runs. So it’s no surprise that it beats our overall Shacknews Game of the Year award.

Balatro is just something special. It has a delicious and addictive roguelike scoring chip with a poker hand. Unlock and load jokers that can change the odds to your liking. and battle a dastardly Boss Blind round that can interrupt your run before you can say “the house always wins.” But it is no predator. Balatro does not offer or promote gambling. Although PEGI believes that Strange and incorrect It doesn’t trick your wallet with microtransactions or make you watch non-skippable ads about nonsense that want you to buy in order to play more. It won’t trick your kids into using your credit card.

No, Balatro’s true danger is in the devouring of time. Easy to handle and hard to put down The attractive aspect of it lies in how fun it is to see the chips increase when you hit your desired hand at the right time. It’s a small feeling when you open card packs between rounds in the in-game shop. and get the joker, card, tarot, or planet card you were hoping for. Likewise, it’s a bitter aftertaste when a run that was going well is hit by a tough draw or Boss condition. Nasty Blind It’s the salty flavor that encourages you to say “No, I’m not quitting that one” as you hit New Run with indignant determination. Bless your decision if you have the strength to claim that the last thing never happened to you when playing this game.

There’s a reason so many of us voted for this game. There’s a reason why it’s shared the stage with Astro Bot and Metaphor: ReFantazio at The Game Awards, The Golden Joysticks, The Indie Game Awards, Steam Awards, and now The Shacknews Awards. (Apart from that, LocalThunk is a committed enough game developer to pull that off.) And finally, there’s a reason why Balatro became the mobile game of the year. Indie game of the year And now it’s game of the year overall. This is the first game in the history of Shacknews. If you don’t know what the reason is, Just pick it up, play it. Try running it for a few rounds and try for your first victory. We almost guarantee you’ll figure it out soon after.

Balatro is now available at PC– Xbox– PlayStation– Nintendo Switch– appleand robot Equipment Be sure to read about the rest of the Shacknews Awards in our Year of the Game: 2024 feature.