Balatro
Available on iOS and Android
For the sake of your free time, I’m sorry to report that Balatro is terrific on mobile devices. The hit poker-roguelike mashup that released on PC and consoles earlier in 2024 was later ported to mobile, and as you might guess given the nature of the game, it works exceedingly well on a touchscreen interface. Given the run-based nature and ability to knock out a single round fairly quickly, Balatro lends itself exceptionally well to on-the-go mobile gaming, easily making it one of the best games you can play on your phone in 2024.
If you haven’t already experienced Balatro, don’t be mistaken by thinking this is simply a roguelike where the gameplay consists of playing poker. That does form the base, but it belies the true depth of the game, which revolves around modifying your deck over the course of a run–adding or removing cards, duplicating them, and changing their suit or rank–to align with the bonuses granted by Joker cards you’ll randomly amass. The effect of these Jokers can range greatly and completely upend the normal approach to the value of hands in poker, allowing for a seemingly endless array of approaches that make each run feel unique. It’s deeply satisfying to put together what feels like a so-good-it’s-broken deck, and equally devastating when a run unexpectedly comes crashing to a halt.
“Balatro ticks all the boxes for a roguelite that creates a feedback loop that’s difficult to draw yourself away from,” Alessandro Barbosa wrote in GameSpot’s Balatro review (which covered the PC version). Its fundamentals are incredibly easy to understand, even if you’re unfamiliar with poker, but the ways in which it works within the game’s boundaries (and often breaks free from them) injects a level of depth to each hand to play that’s both challenging and rewarding to continually engage with. It’s a game that will melt away time as you hit play on one run after the next, with each defeat never stinging long enough to dissuade the possibility of victory on the next. While a handful of boss antes annoyingly end runs prematurely, they’re nowhere near detrimental enough to take away from the immensely satisfying balance that Balatro strikes in every other aspect.”
— Chris Pereira