Balatro has been receiving some flak for its Game Of The Year nomination on social media, particularly those commenting, “It’s a card game, it doesn’t deserve GOTY.” Some of the other takes I’ve seen include:
“Balatro looks lame compared to Wukong.”
“I know how good Balatro apparently is, but I don’t think a card game without a narrative, interesting gameplay and an artistic vision should be nominated.”
“It’s a card game. I’m good.”
“Balatro looks like a cheap mobile game.”
“I don’t understand how a game about poker and gambling, with silly art design, got nominated for Game Of The Year.”
While I don’t begrudge anyone from having their own personal opinions, it’s my job to argue with them. I think Balatro does have artistic vision, interesting gameplay, looks as good as Wukong in a completely different way, and that sometimes the “cheap mobile game” is exactly what I need in my life.
Getting To Know Balatro
Balatro doesn’t have flashy next-gen graphics like Black Myth: Wukong, the world-building of Shadow of Erdtree, or the polished RPG mechanics of Metaphor: Refantazio, but it’s easily the game I’ve put the most hours into over the past year. Balatro breaks apart one of the most iconic games in the world – poker – and reimagines it. The result is a totally unique gameplay loop, the best raw gameplay, I’d argue, out of any of those GOTY nominees. Balatro is polished, compelling, and brilliantly designed – all by a single developer. This is a clever game. I’ve seen comparisons to Tetris, mostly because of the game’s simple, well-designed fundamentals that can be taken to extremes if you put it into the right person’s hands–rather than the idea that Balatro might be the next GOAT. Let’s not get too carried away.
I’ve played Balatro at my desk, on the bus, on the toilet, on a plane, on a train, and at a particularly boring wedding. My obsession with the game comes in waves, and whenever I want to play, it’s in my pocket. Balatro’s gameplay loop is dopamine defined. It takes less than thirty minutes to grasp what you need to do in the game, but hundreds of hours to master its gold stake (the highest difficulty) runs. The journey to becoming good at Balatro is about understanding the meta of the game – High Card hands are usually your best strategy because you’ll always have what you need to make a high-scoring hand, but it’s also about being able to adapt to the way the cards fall. It feels incredible whenever you manage to build a deck that hits the stratosphere. The game is instantly affirming and the sound of the multiplying score is like a sugar rush.
Balatro’s audio and visual design are also top tier. The hypnotic soundtrack loops in my dreams and the face of the joker cards hover in the corner of my eyes after I’ve been playing too long.
The GOTY Dilemma
The core of the problem with any discussion of GOTY is that it is completely subjective. Balatro might be my GOTY, but it might not be yours. That’s fine. But to dismiss a game as smart as Balatro as ‘just a card game’ boggles my mind. That for some reason Balatro is viewed as a lesser game than its triple-A competition because it’s ‘like Solitaire’ (it isn’t, at all, but this is another brain-rot opinion I’ve seen) is upsetting. Games are so much more than IP fanfare and raytracing. Balatro’s got a lot of soul. We should be celebrating a game like this, rather than knocking it down.
And that’s what all this is really about, anyway. Balatro’s developer posted on X that they were super hyped with the nomination, it’s the sort of wild outcome that solo developers can only really dream of. I don’t think Balatro will win GOTY, but I do believe it has the right to be on the list. The last indie nomination for GOTY we got at TGA was Stray in 2022. I loved that game, but I don’t think it deserved to win GOTY ahead of Elden Ring…obviously. Hades vs Last Of Us Part 2 in 2020? Well, that was a little closer to call.
Winner or not, Balatro is an excellent game, and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least give it a go. In theory, that’s what The Game Awards are all about. Look past the gratuitous sponsorships and sometimes controversial rule changes, or not rule changes, depending on who you ask, and TGA should be about celebrating the diverse gaming industry. I think it’s pretty neat that games like both Wukong and Balatro are up for the same award. You can enjoy both of them. Or neither of them. But there’s no denying they’ve both earned their spot on the list.
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