I’m addicted to the mobile game that might just take home Game of the Year

If you’re looking for a new game to destroy your productivity and phone battery at the same time, you’re in luck. Indie darling Balatro is available on iOS and Android devices after releasing on Steam and consoles earlier in the year. The game is an addictive roguelike deck builder where you progress through stages called antes. It’s complicated to explain, but things quickly fall into place when you start playing. Before I bought Balatro, I didn’t know a thing about Poker, but I picked up all the necessary knowledge through in-game tutorials and just playing the game.

If you need another reason to download, The Game Awards have nominated Balatro for Game of the Year. It’s up against competition like Astro Bot, Black Myth: Wukong, and more. Keep reading to see why I think it deserves to take home the win.

What is Balatro?

Poker + Roguelike + Deck-builder

If you’re familiar at all with Slay the Spire, it’s a lot like that, but you defeat bosses and stages with Poker hands instead of attacks. You get special modifiers that reward you with more points if you play certain hands, so it’s not a matter of always having the best Poker hand. The final boss of each ante has a gimmick that could hinder your run, so you could meet a frustrating end after everything was going so well up to that point. With runs lasting just a matter of minutes, if you lose, there’s always a sense of going one more round, and that’s why my phone battery hates to see me launch this game. The nice part about roguelikes is that even if you don’t succeed in defeating the final boss, you still unlock something like a new card you can use in your future runs.

While the game was available and fully portable on the Switch, I don’t often take my Switch outside like I do my phone, so Balatro’s mobile release has opened up a new can of worms that lets me play anywhere. Taking my dog on a walk? Balatro. Waiting in line at the grocery store? Balatro. Sitting in bed late at night when I should be sleeping? You guessed it: Balatro. It’s easy to envision this game taking over a lot of my daily life. The only thing holding me back from playing all day is the need to charge my phone.

Related

10 addictive Android games to play on your phone or tablet

The quality of Android games available in Google Play Store have never been better, and these titles make it so hard to put your phone or tablet down.

Balatro isn’t free, but it’s worth it

A small price to pay

While a lot of the popular mobile games are free of charge, Balatro costs a one-time fee of $10 on both Google Play and Apple’s App Store. In my experience, it’s well worth the price of admission as it’s given me dozens of hours of playtime, and all of that has been from the comfort of my PC. Mobile Balatro has even more appeal, and I have no problem double-dipping on a game I already know I love.

If you’re on iOS, Balatro is included in an Apple Arcade membership, so it could be worth going down that path if you find other games on the service that catch your eye. The game’s size comes in at just 141 MB, so it has the added benefit of taking up hardly any space on your phone. That’s a blessing and a curse, because it means you probably don’t have to delete anything to make room for it.

Related

Like clockwork, PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary preorders are ruined by scalpers

What should be a day celebrating the legacy of PlayStation turned into frustration thanks to scalpers.

Ultimately, I would give Balatro a recommendation to anybody looking for a new roguelike to play on their phone. It’s easy to pick up and learn, and if it gets its hooks into you as it did me, there are hours upon hours of fun ahead of you. The only thing I’ll say is you need to make sure you get all of your work done ahead of time because it’s a productivity and battery killer.