Best Video Games of 2024

2024 was on the best years for indie gaming in recent memory, so it takes a lot to stand out amid the wave of experimental mechanics and rich narrative experiences. The best way to do that? Being fun as hell. That’s Pepper Grinder to a tee.

Developed by Ahr Ech, Pepper Grinder is a 2D platformer that emphasizes momentum to push players further, faster, in a rich pixel art world. The game follows Pepper, a plucky adventurer who finds herself shipwrecked and robbed of everything but a beastly power drill device that’s strong enough to propel her through the earth itself. Chasing down waves of enemies called Narlings, and battling big bosses, Pepper is able to use the grinder to not just maim baddies, but solve puzzles and, most importantly, tear her way through dirt and water at high speeds, giving each level a kinetic feeling that’s normally reserved for special stages in most games.

A simple game overall, Pepper Grinder excels by sticking to its fundamentals as a tried-and-true action platformer. At a time where gaming design has adopted a “more is more” philosophy, it’s refreshing to see a game that’s mercifully short but maximizing the time it has. Had less indie games arrived to such acclaim this year, Pepper Grinder might’ve been seen as 2024’s version of Celeste. As it stands, it’s still and excellent pixel art thrill ride that will have you smiling with glee as you power-drill dolphin leap between gaps maniacally.

As noted in our review, Stellar Blade is a profoundly stupid game. Developed by South Korean studio Shift Up, it’s a gory, ludicrously sexualized action-romp that cribs just about every concept it has from other famous action games and various anime tropes. Its story centers on a super-soldier-esque Airborne Squad member named Eve, who’s tasked with saving the remnants of humanity from the alien creatures of dubious origin that have laid waste to Earth. With a thin narrative whose central mysteries are telegraphed a mile away, the game relies on its crunchy action combat and the cheesecake gazing of its sex-doll like protagonists to carry it through.

But here’s the thing: it still works. If taken at face value, there’s little to love about the game’s plot. But like any good B-movie, Stellar Blade is at its best when being laughed at, letting the ludicrousness take hold as you enjoy the ride. The game plays tightly and feels good to control, which is especially important during the pseudo-open world exploration sections. The combat is empowering and satisfying to master. Even the music, filled with bizarrely catchy jazz-like ambience and K-pop ballads, will worm its way into your mind. If you subscribe to the idea of a guilty pleasure, Stellar Blade fits the bill as the year’s best porn-parody wrapped in silly violent veneer.

There’s plenty of ways to make an Indiana Jones game; for almost thirty years the Tomb Raider, and later Uncharted, series have all but perfected the formula in a modern setting. That’s what makes Bethesda’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle such a surprise. By shirking what players expect an Indy game to be, the developers at MachineGames can find joy in what it could be.

Rather than sticking to the third-person adventure format players might’ve anticipated, The Great Circle puts them directly in the shoes of the archaeologist for a first person POV of the whip-cracking serial action. Set shortly after 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, the game tells a new story that will lead Indy across the globe from Vatican City to the pyramids of Giza. With motion capture and voicework by Troy Baker (The Last of Us), whose Harrison Ford impression is at times indistinguishable from the real thing, The Great Circle often feels like the best Indiana Jones movie never made.

But what sets it apart from all things Indy before is how the game slows down the pace in each of its main regions for players to meticulously comb through artifacts and collectibles and perform side quests that add to the overall mystique of the character. With many of the same developers as the cult hit The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (2004) — widely considered one of the greatest movie-to-game adaptations of an IP — The Great Circle shares DNA with more than one top tier franchise, and is in many ways more than anyone could’ve hoped for.

Following the lead of fighting games and MOBAs as the next genre seeing a minor renaissance, real-time strategy titles are on the upswing. Back in the Flash-based era of the 2000s, tower defense games were king, a subgenre where players would prepare heavily to fortify their base or region from timed waves of incoming foes, left to live or die only by their own mistakes.

True to that spirit, Capcom’s Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess brings back the brutal difficulty of the tower defense genre with a modern sheen. Players take on the role of Soh, the sworn guardian of the divine maiden Yoshiro, tasked with rallying local forces to purify each region, night-by-night, and keep their charge safe from the dark forces plaguing the land.

Combining the third-person real-time action of samurai-themed games of yore like Onimusha, with the tower defense setup of games like Kingdom Rush, players must balance steady combat with deep preparation and resource management. By controlling troops at a whim to swap positions and tackle threats that have broken through defenses, there’s also shades of a dark version of Pikmin. Yet, despite its many influences, Kunitsu-Gami is also a game that feels almost out of place in 2024. The fact that a game filled with this many ideas from seemingly dead or niche subgenres even exists feels special itself.

It’s been a rough couple of years for fans of Bioware, with both 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda and 2019’s Anthem failing to live up to the storied developer’s lofty reputation. For many, the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard felt like a make-or-break moment; it might’ve finally been time to write off the studio that was once on the forefront of immersive action-RPG design. Fortunately, Bioware managed to stick the landing.

In some ways, Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels a little safe, with ties to the previous game, Inquisition (2014) by way of returning characters like Solas, as well as a shortened leash on the open world elements, which are now limited to explorable hubs rather than a sprawling expanse. But the curated experience serves the game’s overall vision of creating a tight, branching narratives that’s driven by player choice — Bioware’s calling card from its biggest games.

With a rich character creator and the ability to manipulate the story to reflect decisions made in past games, giving The Veilguard a feeling of homecoming, which is apt. Moving away from the slower pace of battles from before, its real-time combat feels sleekly modern but totally divorced from Bioware’s ethos, playing a bit more like Mass Effect in action (that’s a good thing).

But outside of being a well-designed, charmingly written RPG adventure to sink into, the game’s greatest strength is its potential for more. By recementing Bioware as a powerhouse, the anticipation for their future games is finally back.

At this point in pop culture, it’s a little hard to muster much excitement for most things Star Wars. The endless expansion of the IP under Disney’s rein has rapidly led to franchise fatigue, and even when something is genuinely good, it’s all too easy to get lost in the shuffle of sameness.

That’s what makes Star Wars Outlaws so impressive. The story focuses on a very specific slice of the Star Wars universe — the criminal underbelly — from the perspective of a dashing rogue that’s completely free of the Jedi of it all. It’s a game that meticulously recreates the soul of the franchise that’s long been cast aside in favor of the oversaturated push of its most obvious elements.

Players take on the role of Kay Vess, a thief from Canto Bight who messes up a big job and is forced to go on the run to find allegiances with different gangs and clans to regain her footing for one big heist. It’s a simple premise, one a galaxy’s distance away from the theatrics of war, but it makes for an effective reminder that Star Wars used to be many different things beyond an unending string of Force wielders filling in the gaps in canon.

The first ever open world game in the series, players can traverse multiple planets that span the original trilogy to the sequels (!), and some original locales. While there’s some jankiness in the overall gameplay, no piece of Star Wars media has so lovingly recreated the tangible feeling of George Lucas’ world since the director himself threw that tone out the window with the prequels. That’s what makes it one of the best Star Wars games ever made.

For anyone who hasn’t followed Call of Duty in the last decade, diving back in can be overwhelming. Between the annual mainline release and the constantly evolving live-service model of Warzone, the franchise has become an ever-present monolith. But even as the series has fallen victim to constant iteration, it would be a mistake to truly count it out. The latest entry, Black Ops 6, proves that there’s some juice left in the tank and may leave you wondering, “Damn it, is Call of Duty cool again?”

Continuing the story of the Black Ops sub-series, the game brings back the set piece heavy action movie thrills that made the original Modern Warfare trilogy such a staple, while tripling down on other game modes like the beloved Zombies, fleshing out it out in maximalist fashion. That’s on top of the game’s classic multiplayer mode, which for many will make up most of their gaming diet for the next year.

In some ways, there’s almost too much game here, with the campaign, Zombies, and multiplayer each delivering an experience that could be its own individual release. But for Call of Duty, more is more, and after a few years in a row of increasingly anemic packages, Black Ops 6 feels like both a reward for the franchise faithful and a hard sell on bringing in newcomers and lapsed players.

But it’s not just about playing the greatest hits; there’s some surprising innovation woven into the fabric with the omnimovement system — a fluid mechanic for movement that changes the way everything Call of Duty now plays and evokes the John Woo-like action movie feeling that the games have often strived for.

At a time when video game remakes are all the rage, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth does things a little differently. As the second part of a trilogy of games attempting to retell the story of one of history’s most beloved RPGs, it’s tasked with not just updating quality of life standards and delivering modernized gameplay and visuals, but also expanding on aspects of the 1997 original’s world to justify its own size. To those extents, it excels. Rebirth improves pretty much every beat of its predecessor, 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake, in terms of gameplay, scope, and the addition of open-world explorative elements that the first part of the reimagining was sorely lacking.

That being said, the most controversial aspect of Remake was that it only partially served as a 1:1 retelling of the OG VII, instead using some very iffy storytelling sleight of hand to ambiguously change the characters’ trajectory through flimsy breaks from fate. Detractors of that decision will still find a lot to love in Rebirth, which builds on the second act structure of the well-worn plot for most of its run time but will be left disappointed when the story ultimately deviates, pivoting to its newfound path.

Hollow ending aside, the vast majority of what there is to see and do in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is extremely satisfying and well-polished. Its action-RPG combat is second to none, its minigames are (mostly) fun, and the newly added exploration elements arguably give the middle act of a reboot tale more hours to fill than the entire play time of the game that inspired it.

Between games like Black Myth: Wukong and Marvel Rivals, 2024 has been a breakthrough year for Chinese developers, but for Papergames, it’s just the next evolution of their already massive success with the Nikki franchise. With Infinity Nikki, the studio makes the leap from mobile games to the AAA market in a big way, and they’ve done it with style.

Infinity Nikki is a lot of things, incorporating open world exploration with creature capture systems and a huge emphasis on outfits and cosmetics. It’s Zelda meets Pokémon — but make it fashion. Leaping beyond mobile devices to consoles and PC, Infinity Nikki delivers beautiful anime-inspired visuals that are the backbone of its cozy gameplay ethos.

By focusing on mini-games, collectables, and tons of customization, Nikki move aways from the standard open world grind of combat and delivers something more wholesome and much needed at a point where just about everything in reality feels fraught. When the going gets rough, dropping in the technicolor dream state of Infinity Nikki might just be the balm we need.

Another heavily story-driven indie gem of the year, Sunset Visitor’s 1000xResist blends striking anime-inspired visual design with a somber story about humanity’s fall over 1,000 years. Players take on the role of Watcher, one of six sister clones housed in an underground bunker in servitude of their creator and master, the Allmother. As a character tasked with chronicling the memories and shared experiences of mankind through Allmother, Watcher’s journey centers on piecing together the mysteries of how and why humans were eradicated by an alien species called the Occupants, with many twists along the way.

Gameplay in 1000xResist largely relies on light exploration and dialogue-heavy sequences as Watcher re-lives many of the moments of Allmother’s previous life as a human named Iris. For those looking for action, there’s very little to find here, but for fans of twisted mysteries and narrative knots, with some light puzzle-solving in between, there’s a lot to appreciate.

1000xResist can be a hard sell, with little to describe the moment-to-moment gameplay beyond boiling it down to a “walking sim,” or the experience of playing an adventure game set primarily in between all the action. But for anyone willing to take a leap of faith, it presents the feeling of playing a modern anime classic in interactive form. Expect to see this one repeatedly pop-up during awards season come year’s end.

The king of 3D brawlers, Tekken has long been a staple of both arcades and home console play, but with no new entries since 2015’s Tekken 7, fans have been hungry for a modern iteration of one of gaming’s most cartoonishly ape-shit franchises.

Story wise, Tekken 8 picks up where its predecessor left off with the melodramatic tension between father-son adversaries Kazuya Mishima and Jin Kazama (both previous protagonists for the series), as the two square off in an ­Avengers-style scene of physical destruction in the heart of Manhattan. From there, things only get more ridiculous as devil transformations lead to a “getting the team together”-type action narrative that spans the globe as Jin prepares to take down his dad once and for all in the recurring King of the Iron Fist Tournament.

The story of Tekken is ridiculous, but its unabashed commitment to the nonsense elevates its story and arcade mode, as well as informs how everything in this game world works. Players can pick all kinds of fighters, old and new, and square off in fast-paced, high stress 1v1 bouts between martial artists, cyborgs, and not one, but two different bears. With destructible environments and multi-tiered stages, few games evoke the, “Oh shit” feeling of drop kicking your buddy through a plate glass window as he rag-dolls two stories down. Tekken 8 makes those moments its core design.

At a time when all games get a slow drip IV of perpetual updates and tweaks, few developers take as ambitious an approach to “the big one” as FromSoftware has with Elden Ring’s first and only downloadable content expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree. Practically the size of a new release, Edrtree brings an entirely new open-world region to The Lands Between for seasoned players to explore.

Seasoned is the keyword here, as the content in Shadow of the Erdtree isn’t even available to players unless they almost entirely beat the base game, itself one of the most harrowingly difficult experiences of the last few years. But the DLC goes a step further, fine tuning and reinventing many of the core systems from Elden Ring proper, with faster, more devastating boss battles that have drawn ire from gamers unable to “get good” enough to prevail.

But with Elden Ring, the difficulty is the point — it always has been. FromSoftwork’s library is a legacy of pain, beginning with 2009’s Demon’s Souls all the way to now. Not every game is for every person, but for those who are enticed by the survivalist mentality and find gratification in overcoming seemingly insurmountable feats, Shadow of the Erdtree is the mountain you’ll want to climb all the way to its stunning peak.

Video games as a medium offer a uniquely intimate way to feel empathy. By putting players directly in the perspective of their characters, every personal struggle and development can feel more deeply impactful. So, for those who have never felt the marrow-level pangs of sadness and joy that come with parenthood, games like Neva can provide a powerful way to open the pathway to those experiences.

From Nomada Studio (Gris), Neva is a 2D action-platformer that puts players in the role of a mysterious warrior named Alba, who’s traveling the wilderness alongside a massive wolf mother and cub. After tragedy strikes in its opening moments, Alba is charged with looking after the pup, and that bond is the core root of the gameplay. Overall, it’s a relatively simple experience, with some solid action and puzzling, but it’s the emotional journey that elevates Neva into one of the most affecting games of the year.

Be warned, unless you’re entirely soulless, Neva will make you bawl — likely within the first few minutes. As a pup, Neva is inexperienced and vulnerable, and seeing the dark toxicity of the rapidly fading world bring her pain will kickstart an instinctual fury in players and the need to protect her at all costs. After an enemy first pins Neva to ground, her cries become motivators to decimate the threat, and all others, that lasts well into the yearlong cycle of the story. Watching Neva grow up and come into her own, more confident and capable (and with her own desires, too).

In its brief runtime, Neva delivers an emotional sucker punch most games can’t deliver with ten times the length. But true to the cyclical nature of its story, it’s best experienced over and over again.

It’d be easy to chalk up Marvel Rivals to a lazy clone of games like Overwatch, although the comparison is clearly warranted. Taking the 6v6 hero shooter gameplay that made vanilla Overwatch a global sensation back in 2016, Rivals delivers a deeply unbalanced, chaotic mess of an experience that is driven by pure comic book bliss.

Switching from a first-person shooter perspective to third-person allows its roster of 33 playable characters pulled from 85-years worth of Marvel’s pantheon to each thrive and feel unique. Just picture rolling up with Rocket Raccoon mounted of the shoulder of Groot, fighting arm in arm with icons like Spider-Man, Captain America, and Jeff the Land Shark (?).

The commitment to the bit of making Marvel silly is one of the key features of Rivals, where any number of heroes and villains can team-up for unexpected synergy moves. Choosing Thor can embolden characters like X-Men’s Storm or Cap himself, imbuing them with additional electricity powers.

And while Rivals is unbalanced for a multiplayer shooter, with an outsized number of its roster built for dealing damage rather than support, its classes are more cleverly designed than most games of its ilk, with most of its characters offering a variety of abilities that can change up how they play on the fly and serve multiple functions.

It may not be an esports-level competitive game, but by leaning into what makes casual players tick, Marvel Rivals is bound to hold onto the attention of a casual audience for a long time to come.

If roguelikes are the bell of the ball these days, then “Metroidvanias” — 2D exploration games like Hollow Knight that borrow from the Metroid and Castlevania series — are yesterday’s news. Indie games like 2017’s Hollow Knight helped reinvigorate the subgenre, leaning on 2D side-scrolling gameplay with a heavy emphasis on deep exploration, breakneck action, and lots of backtracking to uncover previously locked off areas.

But a good idea is a good idea, and Shared Memory’s Animal Well is full of enough of them to reignite the spark of a well-worn genre. Unlike other Metroidvanias, which often pit you as a super soldier or warrior, here players embody an egg-like… thing. With no major weapons or crazy moves to utilize, it leans more heavily into the perplexing puzzle mechanics of well-timed jumps over perilous terrain and mental ingenuity to read the room and figure out the next point of interest. It’s a game where the joy comes from discovery rather than conquest and is a refreshing contrast to other games of its ilk.

With a minimalist story that eschews pretty much all need for context, players can set aside questions about what the world is about or why, instead allowing the games psychedelic vibes and haunting ambiance to wash over them in the pursuit of the next great treasure trove. In Animal Well, you’re just the egg. What comes next is up to you to find.

Even in today’s polarized world, you’d be hard pressed to find many AAA games that are openly tackling politics. You’d be even less likely to find one — a fantasy JRPG at that — that handles its messaging and themes with a deft hand, without going too esoteric or obtuse. But that’s what makes Atlus’ latest, Metaphor ReFantazio, so impressive.

A spiritual successor to the revered Persona franchise, Metaphor ReFantazio is an ambitious roleplaying game with a lot to say, but has rich characters, lore, and satisfying gameplay to back it up. Set in the medieval fantasy world of Euchronia, a technologically advanced and wealthy kingdom that’s being attacked by horrible creatures known as “Humans,” who represent sin and excess, and feed on people anxieties.

To call Metaphor “deft” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s subtle, but its often obvious and lofty themes aren’t hollow. Fantasy has long been the go-to for storytellers looking to provide commentary on the shortcomings of society, but by weaving a dramatic yarn with complex characters and dynamics, built on the foundation of great philosophers, it manages to remain a very human fable, despite its genre trappings. Few RPGs manage to touch on real world topics in an effective way without pushback, but somehow Metaphor ReFantazio’s specific blend of narrative, worldbuilding, and best-in-class strategy play manage to make the pill easier to swallow, even for the most vocal critics of “politics” in video games.

To unite a fan base — any fan base — is a minor miracle; it’s one that Metaphor ReFantazio somehow pulls off.

Speaking of the pleasure derived from insurmountable difficulty, Arrowhead Games Studios’ Helldivers 2 is the type of game that doesn’t just throw multiple players into the fray to be instantly annihilated — it’s one that actively mocks you along the way.

Helldivers 2 is essentially a squad-based take on Starship Troopers. To say it’s inspired by Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi satire film would be an understatement; in almost every way, it apes the scathing comedic tone and broad premise of the 1997 movie. As a third-person shooter, players are dropped on hostile planets to slaughter the overwhelming hoards of Bugs (and later Cyborgs and Illuminate), embodying faceless soldiers as cannon fodder sentenced to egregious death in service of spreading “managed democracy” in the name of Super Earth.

The game itself plays tightly, if intentionally restrictive, to create a challenging and often frantic war time facsimile, where working together is essential even if it means sacrificing your buddy in a rain of orbital fire to make it back to the gunship. The heart of Helldivers 2, however, is more human. A constantly evolving live service game, the audience is expected to follow real-time directives and weekly challenges delivered by the developers in character as the totally non-fascist government issuing orders — sometimes even dropping in new features and gaslighting players who point them out. Behind the scenes, there’s even a dedicated game master who is watching player trends to make changes to the game to keep things unpredictable. It’s a novel concept that makes practically every round of Helldivers 2 a potential “you had to be there” moment.

At the time of our initial impressions, Rolling Stone called Hades II the best game of the year, despite not even being complete. It’s still close, even as Hades II continues its early access period for the foreseeable future. Developer Supergiant Games learned from the first Hades — which ran in early access for over a year beginning in 2018 before releasing in full to unanimous acclaim in 2020 — that the best way to fine tune its game was to give players almost everything up front and let them do the heavy lifting through playtest.

Like its predecessor, Hades II is an action roguelike that stars a child of Hades, Lord of the Underworld, on a mission to break free from their subterranean home on a mission of personal importance. This time around, the story follows Melinoë, daughter of Hades and Persephone, and sister to the first game’s lead Zagreus, who is on a quest to save her captive family and all of Olympus from the subjugation of the titan Chronos. Along the way, she’ll garner support from the many gods and Chthonic figures that make up her extended family and supporters in the fight against her grandfather’s rule.

Hades II is a roguelike in that the core loop of the gameplay centers on fighting your way through various randomized chambers and enemies, punctuated by big bosses, and choosing from an unpredictable list of upgrades as you progress. If you die, it’s back to the start to use what little progressive elements carry over for enhancing Melinoë’s abilities for another chance to apply what you’ve learned on the great escape.

What makes Hades II stand apart from the many other stellar games from 2024 so far is its impeccable blend of illustrated art direction, deeply memorable music, and an ever-unfurling narrative that rewards players for engaging in conversations over many, many runs to learn the interpersonal dynamics between every character in its world — which themselves evolve heavily over the course of the journey. The narrative in Hades II shouldn’t work for a roguelike, but it does, addictively — giving us a masterpiece that’s still in the making.

There was a point in the not-so-distant past where video game mascots ruled the world. From Mario to Sonic, and PlayStation’s trio of Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper, and Spyro, every developer in the industry had to make their mark with a lovable face for their brand. Somewhere along the way, that magic died off, succumbing to the uber-mature trend of military shooters and gritty takes on every genre.

It’s that magic that Sony’s Team Asobi has brought back with its newest 3D platformer Astro Bot. Timed to the 30th anniversary of the original PlayStation, Astro Bot traffics heavily in nostalgia, featuring levels and characters inspired by all of the greatest franchises in the company’s history, but unlike previous Astro games that mostly amounted to virtual ads for gaming tech, the mascot’s first full-fledged release is a genuinely brilliant platformer.

Featuring vibrant graphics and art direction, paired with tight controls and clever level design, Astro Bot feels like the Platonic ideal of a certain type of game that dominated home consoles in the Nineties. For newcomers without the personal attachment to the brands, it’s an effusively charming game starring a little chibi robot that’s just fun to play. As the developer behind the tech demos packed in with products like the PSVR and PlayStation 5, Team Asobi is one of the few studios who takes advantage of Sony’s hardware to squeeze every pixel for what its worth and utilizes the DualSense controller’s many oft-forgotten features to make the game feel more tactile.

It’s exhilarating to sprint across rapidly shattering glass to perform a precision leap between gaps, but when the controller in-hand is vibrating in lockstep with each little tippy tap, it feels like the game is catching the genre up to the times. It sounds kind of ridiculous to say that something as straightforward as Astro Bot has greater ambitions than hundred-hour RPGs or all-encompassing live-service games, but it’s true. By perfecting the basics, Astro Bot is the little guy who stands tall among its peers.

These days, there’s no shortage of “roguelike” games. The most replicated trend of the last few years has been to incorporate randomly generated enemies and levels into otherwise basic platformer and action games. Balatro does things a little differently by using the subgenre tropes to ask, “What if poker could be even more soul crushing than at a Vegas casino?”

At its core, Balatro isn’t even poker. It’s a strategy game where a bicycle deck and a suite of superpowered joker cards are the tools to attain a high score. Every round, you’re dealt a hand where the goal is to use basic poker hands to gain points. Over a run, players will get to choose upgraded cards to add to their decks, with chip bonuses or multipliers, and even the ability to add weight to the point totals of individual hands.

To non-gamblers, this could sound arduous, but the elegance of Balatro is tricking users into thinking they’re playing a game of cards when they’re actually fighting their way out of an imaginary dungeon. Every raise of the blind is a boss battle, and only by investing early in personal stratagems can the luck of the draw be overcome.

It helps that the game is visually presented as an eerie take on video screen poker by way of an acid trip from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. With scan lines and the vignetted edges of a CRT monitor, and a pulsating ambient score to boot, Balatro becomes a hypnotic rabbit hole that will bleed you dry of dozens of hours rather than actual cash.

Many would question how a card game could be the best game of the year, and on the surface that seems fair. But the power of Balatro is how quickly it worms its way into players’ brains. What begins as a fun distraction becomes an obsession; before you know it the game is installed on every device, taking over time that used to be for other games, the morning commute, or precious social time. Balatro isn’t just a game, it’s very much a way of life.