Balatro stands a very real chance of being my 2024 game of the year. It’s an inventive take on card games and roguelikes that uses the rules of poker as a universal baseline. The score-chasing of arcades combines deck-building and rule-bending joker cards to create some wild combinations. Balatro is an ingeniously original game that already has its imitators, but that hasn’t stopped consistent comparisons to real-world gambling. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that the game’s creator has now written a clause in their will to keep Balatro as far away from casinos as possible.

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