Balatro took a simple idea and turned it into one of the biggest indie games around. Millions of copies later, an awful lot of us have spent far too much time collecting Jokers and chasing increasingly ridiculous scores.
While it may be the biggest card roguelike, it isn’t the only rogue card game worth checking out. There’s games where Blackjack has become a dungeon crawler, poker hands can kill monsters, and plenty of deckbuilders offer that same satisfaction of finding a powerful, crazy combination.
So, if you’ve played more Balatro than you’d care to admit and need something new, here are 10 games worth trying next.
1. RogueJack21
RogueJack21 focuses on a different type of card game, taking you to the blackjack table. You’re trying to get as close to 21 as possible without going bust, but the cards in your deck do considerably more than change the number sitting in front of you.
Each suit has its own effect. Spades deal additional damage, Hearts restore health, Clubs improve your luck, and Diamonds steal chips that can be spent on new cards and trinkets. Cards can also be upgraded, while more than 100 trinkets give you plenty of opportunities to build synergies as a run develops.
There’s an actual reason you’re playing all this blackjack too. You’re working your way through procedurally generated casinos in Noir City, taking on dealers and pit bosses while trying to get revenge on the mafia-like House that took everything from you. Apparently just winning your money back wasn’t enough.
2. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers
Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers is another game that replaces poker with blackjack, although calling the cards in your deck “playing cards” starts becoming a bit of a stretch once birthday cards, business cards, tarot cards, and all sorts of other nonsense start appearing.
You’re fighting your way through a seedy tavern filled with blackjack-obsessed opponents, with losing hands dealing actual damage, rather than simply emptying your wallet. The four suits have different benefits, and you can add and remove cards as you gradually turn a fairly normal deck into something outrageous.
There are more than 300 cards to find, alongside chips that can activate special effects, minigames, events, shops, and new starting decks to unlock for future runs. The real fun comes from finding combinations that let you start bending blackjack’s rules in your favor, which should sound very familiar if Balatro has already taught you that rules are mostly suggestive.
3. Monster Train 2
It may not be the obvious choice given there’s no poker or blackjack in Monster Train 2, but if your favorite part of Balatro is gradually putting together a build that becomes increasingly ridiculous, there’s plenty here to keep you occupied.
Battles take place across three vertical floors of your train, with enemies climbing toward the Pyre you’re trying to protect. You place units on those floors, use spells to support them, and continually add and upgrade cards as you travel through Hell, Heaven, and the Abyss. Five clans give you very different tools to work with, and combining their strengths opens up a huge number of possible builds.
The popular sequel also adds Room Cards that affect entire floors and Equipment Cards that can be attached to individual units. It’s a very different type of card game from Balatro, but that familiar moment when several effects start interacting and your carefully assembled build suddenly becomes absurdly powerful is very much similar.
4. Black Jacket
If you like your games to have a touch of danger, this is the game for you. Black Jacket sends you to the afterlife and makes you gamble against restless souls for the coins you need to escape Hell.
The basic rules will be familiar to anyone who knows blackjack, but they don’t stay basic for long. Cards can increase or decrease values, force opponents to keep playing, let you peek into decks, swap cards between players, and generally interfere with a game that was already largely based around hoping the next card doesn’t ruin everything.
You’ll collect new cards, Artifacts, Card Suits, and Curses as you progress, opening increasingly strange combinations and more opportunities to manipulate what happens at the table. Opponents have their own playstyles and stories too, with only their hands visible as you play. If Balatro left you wanting another unique twist on a familiar favorite card game, Black Jacket is an easy one to add to the list.
5. Aces & Adventures
Developed by Triple.B.Titles, Aces & Adventures takes poker hands out of the casino and uses them to kill fantasy monsters.
Combat combines a standard deck of playing cards with character-specific ability cards. You can attack with individual cards, throw out pairs, triples, four-of-a-kind, or complete five-card poker hands, while your opponent attempts to counter with something stronger. The four suits also work as mana for abilities, so the cards you’re holding can be useful for far more than simply completing a hand.
There are five playable characters, each with their own abilities and progression, alongside equipment, traits, deckbuilding, and procedurally generated runs. There are also 13 fully voiced campaigns if you want something more structured. It’s much more of an RPG than Balatro but seeing a good poker hand appear at exactly the right moment still delivers that same little rush of satisfaction.
6. Poker Quest: Swords and Spades
Poker Quest: Swords and Spades uses a regular 52-card deck, but rather than scoring poker hands, you’re using those cards to power weapons, armor, spells, and other equipment while traveling through a fantasy world filled with monsters.
Each item has its own requirements. A weapon may need a particular combination of cards before it can attack, while another piece of equipment could use completely different values or suits. That means each hand becomes a puzzle as you decide which cards should go where and how to squeeze as much as possible out of whatever you’ve drawn.
There are more than 20 heroes to play, thousands of items to find, and plenty of opportunities for runs to develop in very different directions. It doesn’t play much like Balatro once the cards hit the table, but both games are very good at taking an ordinary deck of playing cards and finding an enormous number of things to do with it.
7. Slay the Spire
If Balatro has opened the door to roguelike deckbuilders and you somehow haven’t played Slay the Spire yet, this is probably the most obvious hole to fill next.
There are no traditional playing cards here. Instead, you choose one of four characters and gradually build a deck of attacks, skills, powers, and other abilities as you climb the Spire. New cards are offered after battles, relics add passive effects, and the route you take determines which enemies, shops, events, and bosses you’ll have to deal with.
The individual cards are only part of it. Much like putting together Jokers in Balatro, the good stuff comes from discovering interactions that turn several ordinary effects into something way more powerful. Then you start another run, find completely different cards and relics, and somehow lose another couple of hours working out what you can break this time.
8. Heroes of Magic & Cards
Heroes of Magic & Cards keeps the poker hands but swaps Balatro’s increasingly enormous scores for monsters, magic, and a fantasy adventure.
You still have a 52-card deck and familiar hands such as pairs and straights, but now those hands are being used to attack enemies as you work your way from encounter to encounter. Along the way, you can improve the cards in your deck, collect relics, and gradually shape your build around whatever strategy is starting to come together.
There are three heroes to choose from, with more than 90 abilities spread between them. Those abilities can alter how cards behave and open different approaches to building a run, so knowing poker hands is only the beginning of what you need to think about.
It’s one of the closer matches on this list if the part of Balatro you’re missing most is taking a normal deck of cards and making it do incredible things.
9. King’s Well
Developed by Fire Brick Games, King’s Well takes us away from the casino again, but cards, deckbuilding, and putting together the right combinations remain firmly at the center of things.
Rather than simply trying to build the highest-scoring hand, you’re working with the cards available during each run and figuring out how their different effects can work together. Like most good roguelike deckbuilders, the excitement isn’t finding one individually powerful card and calling it a day. It’s gradually shaping the whole deck until cards that didn’t look special on their own start becoming much more useful alongside everything else you’ve collected.
That makes it another option for anyone whose favorite part of Balatro is the build rather than poker itself. You won’t be chasing Flush Fives or filling the screen with Jokers, but you will be spending plenty of time looking at cards and wondering whether adding just one more will improve everything or completely ruin what you’ve built.
10. VELATO
VELATO brings us straight back to poker, but this time your opponents are paying attention to how you play.
It’s a tactical roguelike card battler built around poker hands, Joker synergies, and bluffing. Opponents can remember your behavior, which means repeatedly relying on the same tricks can eventually make you easier to read. Suddenly, convincing the other side that you’re doing one thing while preparing something completely different, becomes another part of building a successful run.
There are more than 100 Jokers to work with, giving you plenty of room to build combinations and create an economy capable of keeping your run alive as the pressure increases. Bosses introduce their own traits and modifiers too, forcing you to adapt rather than relying on the same strategy every time.
The poker hands and Joker-heavy builds make the Balatro connection obvious, but the bluffing system gives VELATO an idea of its own to play with.
There’s Life After Balatro
Finding another Balatro isn’t easy, but the ones featured here should scratch the same itch. Part of what made it such a hit was that nobody expected poker, roguelike mechanics, and a pile of increasingly strange Jokers to work quite as well together as they did.
Thankfully, there are plenty of other games playing around with cards in their own ways. You can swap poker for blackjack in RogueJack21, take poker hands into battle in Aces & Adventures, or leave traditional playing cards behind completely and spend several hundred hours building decks in Slay the Spire.
None of them are going to replace Balatro, but they could give you another reason to say “just one more run” at a completely unreasonable time of night, and really, isn’t that what we’re looking for?