Until the sterling evaluations of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth dropped earlier today, the best-reviewed game of 2024 was Balatro - a deck-building poker roguelike that seemed to take over Steam Next Fest.
Balatro's Steam Next Fest demo proved to be one of the big hits of the event, taking the basic rules of poker and turning it all on its head. The basic idea is that you get dealt cards and you need to build poker hands - a full house, a straight, a pair, and so on. Each hand has a particular payout in points and multipliers, earning you chips that you need to beat certain target scores.
