Hey, remember Balatro? Man, what a game. Even two years after its release, I’m still thinking about what a lightning-in-a-bottle idea developer LocalThunk captured there. Taking the design language of a roguelike and applying it to a deceptively strategic card game like poker? I could write a dissertation on why that fusion works as well as it does. I could probably also write one about the wave of games it has already inspired, but that paper wouldn’t be quite as flattering.
