Last year,Balatrocompletely took over the world, introducing many players to the roguelike deckbuilding genre with its flashy animations, extremely satisfying gameplay loop, and catchy music. If you were one such player, you may be intrigued to know that there is a whole world of options within the roguelike deckbuilding genre, and some that you may like even more than Balatro.
While Balatro is incredible in its own right, other games like Slay the Spire or Monster Train require a bit more strategy and actual deckbuilding to succeed, making for a more mentally satisfying experience. Below, we’ll take a look at several deckbuilding games that will have you ditching Balatro entirely.
If you’ve played the recently released first-person RPGTainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, you’ll already be familiar with the world of Tainted Grail: Conquest, but the gameplay is completely different. Tainted Grail: Conquest is a roguelike deckbuilder with RPG elements set in a grimdark world inspired by Arthurian legend.
There are several different characters to choose from, each with their own set of cards and accompanying playstyles. Between battles, you can explore the world in a third-person perspective, completing quests and bringing NPCs back to your town to unlock new facilities.
Luck Be a Landlord is one of the closest things you can get to Balatro, but with a unique spin. Where Balatro has you playing poker hands to score points, Luck Be a Landlord is based around a slot machine. Each spin lets you add a new symbol into your pool, giving you a chance of rolling it with each new spin.
The graphics and music may not be as polished as Balatro, but the gameplay offers the same level of risk and reward management that makes this genre so compelling. Plus, if you’re just really into gambling, Luck Be a Landlord has got that going for it, too.
5Word Play
Word Play is like if Balatro was Scrabble instead of poker. Each round, you are given 16 letters with which to spell words. Each letter has an associated score, and each word you spell will give you more points. Get enough points, and you’ll move to the next round.
Between rounds, you build your ‘deck’, or bag of letters, as well as your modifiers, which work similarly to Balatro’s Jokers, but on a smaller scale. If you’re a fan of word games like Scrabble, Word Play is a ton of fun, as the correct play each turn isn’t always obvious, and players who have a stronger vocabulary will have fun testing their knowledge.
Chrono Ark is a party-based roguelike deckbuilder with RPG elements. There are 20 different characters to choose from when making up your party, each with their own set of cards they’ll have access to during a run. The key is managing each character’s deck and building synergies between your party members.
Unlike most other roguelikes, Chrono Ark has a deep and engaging story that unfolds throughout the course of your runs, unveiling the mystery of the Twisted World. If you’re a fan of JRPGs, or RPGs with character-based decks like Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Chrono Ark is the game to try next.
Unlike the other games on this list, Library of Ruina is not a roguelike game. This deckbuilder set in Project Moon’s expansive world has you take on the role of a curator of a library. With the promise of riches, various guests will come to the library, and it’s your job to fight them.
Library of Ruina is an absolutely massive game, with hundreds of different cards to experiment with. It also gets truly difficult at some points, but the intriguing narrative and characters make pushing through each battle worth it. There’s an almost Soulslike aspect to the difficulty, where you’ll bang your head against a battle for hours before it finally clicks, then you’ll clear it with no problem.
Monster Train is a strategic roguelike deckbuilder where you are in charge of defending a train bound for hell from angels. To do this, you’ll need to build your deck of minions and special effects, then place them, tower defense style, in each compartment of the train.
Your minions will attack automatically during your turn, so the gameplay is almost like a cross between tower defense, auto battler, and deckbuilder. It sounds a little strange on paper, but in practice it’s a lot of fun. There are tons of synergies to explore and broken builds to try out, so it definitely scratches a similar itch as Balatro.
If you haven’t played Slay the Spire yet, you are in for a treat. While Slay the Spire and Balatro may both be roguelike deckbuilders, they play almost nothing alike. Balatro emphasizes combo-based plays, where each turn, you’re trying to get the most amount of points you’re able to.
On the other hand, Slay the Spire offers a more strategic experience, where you’ll spend some turns setting up for future turns, planning around enemy attacks, and building your deck to solve various problems you’ll encounter, rather than following a strict build. Slay the Spire is considered the best for a reason, so you should definitely give it a try if you’re at all interested.
