The closest games to Balatro are Slay the Spire, Luck be a Landlord and Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers. Below, 9 picks with the reason for each — what carries over from Balatro, and what does not.
Balatro is poker as a deckbuilder — the hands are just scoring templates and the real game is the jokers, which multiply each other into absurd numbers. It is a run-based roguelike where the fun is finding a combination that breaks the rules. Card games without the build are the wrong answer.
Balatro released on the PC & Modern Multi-Platform. The list below is not restricted to that console — a recommendation is only useful if you can actually play it, so it spans generations and platforms.
The deckbuilding roguelike everything since is measured against.
A slot machine as a synergy engine — the closest structural cousin.
Blackjack rebuilt as a roguelike, and very funny.
Deckbuilding with more moving parts and huge combo ceilings.
Pachinko plus deckbuilding, and the same one-more-run pull.
A card game that keeps changing what kind of card game it is.
Inventory as the build, and the synergies are the whole game.
The free content updates, if you have not played the newer jokers.
Same escalating-numbers pleasure, no cards involved.
Slay the Spire. The deckbuilding roguelike everything since is measured against.
Slay the Spire, Luck be a Landlord and Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers are the closest. The full list of Balatro similar games is on this page — 9 of them, each with the reason it is here rather than a genre tag that happens to match.
The picks above span platforms rather than sticking to the PC, because the thing worth copying about Balatro is not a property of the hardware. The PC list further down is the place to go for more from that library.
Because the thing you liked about Balatro is not a property of the hardware. Restricting the list to one console would drop most of the good answers, so the picks above span platforms and eras. If you specifically want more from that library, the PC list further down is the place to start.
By hand, one game at a time, on what the source game actually does — its pacing, its movement, its difficulty, its tone. Genre tags alone put Balatro next to games that feel nothing like it, so they are not the basis for this list. Each pick carries the reason it is here so you can judge it yourself.
No. The whole list is on this page, free, with no sign-in and no email. We earn a small affiliate commission if you buy through a retailer link, which is what pays for the site.
If you already know what kind of answer you want, these are the same list cut by genre — and each one says what it leaves out as well as what it includes:
More from the PC & Modern Multi-Platform library, each with its own recommendations page: