NOMINATE THIS FOR GAME OF THE YEAR!

Everything in this game is designed for maximum dopamine emittance - and if real money was involved, this would need to be outlawed and shunned immediately before it would certainly ruin countless lives. Because if people can get so heavily addicted to the mere simple thrill of all the usual little games that are on offer in the familiar usual places, then this would assuredly cause catastrophe: a new kind of pandemic would sweep the globe, and this is merely Version 1.00. One shudders at the thought of the ways in which it might evolve, with it being so elegantly designed already. So brutally effective, yet innocently charming on the surface: a simple game about scoring poker hands in a vaguely retro veneer.
So play a hand then, and pray to your deity or your dog that it doesn't consume your life whole. Heed the warning, for there might be a time in your life before Balatro, yet there might not might be a time after it: because you'll be too busy grinding away for it to be a life anymore. Go on and play a hand, and then play another, and keep on going until you either finish the run - maybe just about, and you'll be proud for a moment before trying your hand at the next difficulty, the next stake and oh boy can this be tough, but you won't be defeated by a little game about poker hands, will you? Or: if you went sailing through to Ante 8, the endless awaits - and there are a rare few things in life as precious and as beautiful a balance like organically finding or luckily stumbling into a strategy that can stay head to head for a while, until the exponential will do as it does and leave you in the dust.
Whatever you do, you'll fail sooner or later, and then just like in death, a grand nothing awaits for all your efforts - nothing, but the time spent, the life lived, the game played, the knowledge gained. The ol' platitude is true: the goal lies in the journey, the act doing, the act of living. So that's what you do: you won't stare at the main menu screen for long - because life awaits and in death you can rest - so, cue up another run, another go, another attempt, - and laugh in the face of the reaper because in this here world, you're alive and your journey hasn't ended, and you're in control after all. Live it all up, laugh it all up - laugh against the dying of the light, become a jester, a joker, the nightmare of all mighty beings that only ever deal in absolutes, in finalities, that are all too serious to consider the truest truth a human can know: life's a big bad joke and then you die, no punchline and no point - well, that is, ironically, besides the laugh, cause that's what a joke is for. A joke, like a laugh, can only make sense, can only be of worth to the living - and this game is decidedly more than just a bad joke: it's a hearty belly-laugh of a game, it's one of those rare things that you can never get enough of, that keeps you alive, that you'll think and dream about when you're not playing it and that you can never wait to get back to - for just another quick try.

And after all that, if you're still with me: it's such a simple concept, so reduced in scope compared to the grand collective works that pepper the gaming landscape, and yet, curiously, it is also a superlative in every way, it's poker turned to 11 (and good luck getting to ante 11, before the first time it feels impossible). It's such a simple game conceptually, it has no right, it is ourageous for it to be this good, this addicting, this satisfying in all the right ways. It's teasing your brain, always egging you on to really think through every. single. hand that you play - and yet it lends itself so easily to a sporadic, intuitive style that follows the flow of the given run. It is truly elegant, the way in which it achieves this balance.
This feels like if someone manufactured by hand a perfect marble sphere: look at it and be impressed at the labour and commitment, the attention to detail, and marvel at the technical talent to achieve it - yet, be completely unable to grasp the extent of the work, the time, the passion and all the frustration, that went into it. It is deceptively beautiful - like all true works of art and strokes of genius that one might call themselves lucky to encounter in their life.
This might seem like too high of a praise but I am not joking when I say that this rivals true classics like chess or tetris. This is a game that perfectly knows what it wants to be and incomprehensibly somehow achieves it on every single level. It is truly absurd. It feels like it shouldn't be possible and I am all the happier that it is and that this game exists.


TLDR - if you like deck-building rogue lites this is a rare 10/10 - and if you don't know what a deck-building rogue lite is then there is no better way than to start here. The price of admission is low and worth every cent.