Top mobile games of 2024: Iwan's picks, but it's mostly Balatro

• It’s the end of the year, so it’s time to chat “Games of”
• And my pick is, unsurprisingly, Balatro
• It’s not necessarily my favourite though, so why talk about it? Well, come find out

Well, it’s the end of the year, and assuming you’re reading this at the scheduled time, it’s probably December 29th too. And presuming there have been no other major award wins when you see the name Balatro, you’re probably thinking of the swathe of accolades this humble mix of solitaire, poker and roguelike deckbuilder has picked up.

Whether that’s nabbing Indie and Mobile Game of the Year at The Game Awards, or being the only entry in our own Pocket Gamer Awards this time around to take home two separate honours; Best Mobile Port and Best Digital Board Game. It’s safe to say that the humble home that Jimbo built has everyone praising it.

But we’ve also seen people confused, and a little bit angry, that it was even in the running. The inevitable comparisons of flashy gameplay videos versus the relatively simple visuals of Balatro have been, while not endemic, not uncommon either. There seems to be a sense of bafflement that a simple deckbuilder has taken home so many awards.

For me, I think this speaks to why this is my personal pick for GOTY. And why I want to talk about it further; but first let’s have some honourable mentions of my top stories and releases!

A few honourable mentions

• Vampire Survivors' Castlevania expansion: I think I speak for everyone when I say finally. Given how it was teased, with Poncle even having a collaboration with Contra of all things, finally seeing the iconic Castlevania characters in-game is well worth the wait.
• Squid Game: Unleashed is free for all: I think this may set a new precedent for Netflix Games, and it's just an interesting move, besides. This means that more people than ever will play, and without traditional monetisation, it suggests they think this is going to be more valuable as a way to draw in new viewers.
• Watch Dogs: Truth audio adventure released: So yes, this isn't exactly seismic news, but I think if there's one thing you can say it's that Ubisoft has had a hard time really knowing what to do with Watch Dogs. I thought a mobile release was a natural fit when I initially saw this news, but an Audible-only adventure is an interesting choice to go for instead.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

My own personal experience with Balatro has been mixed, on the one hand, it’s definitively attention-holding but on the other, I’ve not quite mastered it. I’ve always found mathematics and comparisons of minute statistics to be a frustrating experience at best, and since Balatro demands optimising your deck later in any run, I’ve not cleared any of them despite my many hours sunk into it (yes, yes, I know).

At the same time, for a cost/benefit analysis of Balatro, I think it’s personally some of the best money I’ve spent in years. It’s simple, easy to sink time into and not too demanding either technically or (mostly) brainpower-wise. Balatro isn’t the perfect time-waster, my personal pick for that goes to Vampire Survivors, but it’s up there.

It looks good too and plays well. For a relatively slim $9.99, you get an attention-holding roguelike deckbuilder that won’t have people scoffing when you play it in public (they might even think the poker hand makes you some kind of gambling mastermind, for better or worse). And the fact that LocalThunk has managed to take such a simple format and give it some, for lack of a better term, oomph, is admirable.

Everything from the deceptively calming lounge muzak to the dings and rattles, as you hit multipliers and accrue cash to spend on your deck, is designed to keep pulling you into a loop. But it’s refreshingly honest about it, in a not too explicit but more of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink manner.

But you’ve heard this all before, so why am I talking about it? Well, apparently for some people this simply isn’t enough.

“But it’s just a game-!”

Now, Balatro isn’t the release this year that’s gotten it most in the neck - I reckon that goes to Astrobot after it won Game of the Year at Big Geoff’s awards show. As an aside it is ironic that we always seem to get so wound up about a show that we all fundamentally acknowledge is a bit full of itself. But I digress, the point here is the reaction to Balatro and the way it’s understood.

Balatro is unashamedly gamey in the design and execution sense. It’s colourful and eye-catching yet not overly complex or flashy; it doesn’t even have that familiar “OMG so retro” sheen to its aesthetic. This is not an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, and it’s worth noting that developer LocalThunk started this (as all good indie projects seem to be) as a passion project very early on before recognising Balatro’s potential.

Yet, to many out there, both in the general public and critical space, Balatro is confounding because of its success. This is not some flashy gacha, nor is it pushing the limits of what can be achieved on mobile. It isn’t even a money-making battle royale that features cute anime women blasting each other with high-power weaponry; to them, it’s simply “a card game.”

Which it is, a very well-executed one that takes the concept and puts a fresh spin on it. And I think it’s worth acknowledging that is the metric we should measure a game’s quality by, not by the fidelity of the visuals or other flashy gubbins. Groundbreaking statement I know, but it bears repeating.

It’s what’s inside that counts

The lesson we should take from Balatro is simple, and it’s one everyone should acknowledge. This humble deckbuilding roguelike has built itself up on both PC, console and mobile, the latter still seemingly an intimidating conundrum for developers and publishers alike, where many barriers are still yet to be broken down.

Now before any of the more business-minded of you point it out, yes, this is not a massive success story bringing in the big bucks. But at the same time for the low overhead, I’d presume this development cost, I wouldn't be surprised if LocalThunk is sitting pretty on a nice nest egg by now.

Balatro proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can release something multiplatform that doesn’t have to be some sort of cross-platform, cross-progression, massively multiplayer gacha adventure on the level of something like Genshin Impact. You can have something simple and well done with a sense of its own style that brings both mobile, console and PC players together.

And I think my own experience of not being very good at Balatro also shows that this is distinctive in how you can approach it. For some, this is a game to optimise to the hilt and to watch in glee as your master-crafted deck clears each run with aplomb. For others like myself, it’s a slower-paced way to pass the time on a long plane flight when you haven’t quite got the brain bandwidth to jump into a session of Vampire Survivors.

So ultimately, what’s the point of all this? Simple, it’s what we seem to always say when something like Balatro gets successful. You don’t have to be a world leader or packed to the gills with ray-tracing and high-octane gameplay to be successful, sometimes you just have to be a bit of a joker.