15 Games Like Balatro (2026): Roguelike Deckbuilders Worth Playing

Balatro arrived in early 2024 with one of the cleanest pitches in recent memory: poker, but it is actually a roguelike deckbuilder where you stack absurd score multipliers until the numbers stop making sense. LocalThunk shipped it as a solo project and it sold millions of copies in months. The reason it hit so hard is structural. The poker layer gives every new player a frame of reference, the Joker system gives veterans an obscene strategy ceiling, and the score escalation across antes makes every run feel like you are trying to break the math.

If you have cleared Gold Stake on every deck, you are looking for the same loop somewhere else. Below are fifteen games that capture different slices of what Balatro does well: stacking synergies, chasing scores, and watching a run snowball into something the game was never balanced for.

Pure Deckbuilders

These are the genre's load-bearing classics. If Balatro got you into deckbuilding, this is where the rabbit hole goes.

1. Slay the Spire

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, iOS, Android

Slay the Spire is the deckbuilder every modern entry measures itself against. You climb a procedurally generated tower, picking one card from three options after each fight, and the cards you draft determine which strategies are even possible by the bosses. Four characters each play completely differently, and the Ascension system layers twenty difficulty modifiers on top of the base game. The overlap with Balatro is synergy-stacking and the satisfaction of getting your engine running in act three. Combat is damage and block, not chip multipliers, but the planning headspace is identical.

2. Monster Train

Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, iOS

Monster Train stacks Slay the Spire vertically. You defend three floors of a train carrying the last ember of hell back toward the surface, and every fight plays across all three floors at once. The dual-clan system lets you mix two factions per run, creating dozens of archetypes from a relatively small card pool. The positioning layer adds a spatial dimension that Balatro and Spire both lack. Covenant difficulty goes up to 25 for players who refuse to be done with a deckbuilder.

3. Vault of the Void

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch

Vault of the Void rebuilt Slay the Spire with one twist: you can swap cards before every fight. Hand management becomes a deliberate act instead of a draw-pile lottery. The result is a deckbuilder that rewards planning over RNG and feels uniquely demanding once you stop relying on lucky draws. Four classes, multiple difficulties, constant updates from a solo developer. The overlap with Balatro is deliberate scaling. The divergence is punishment: Vault is harder than Balatro on equivalent difficulties, and bad sequencing gets exposed fast.

4. Across the Obelisk

Platforms: PC, Mac

Across the Obelisk is a four-character party deckbuilder where you control a full adventuring group instead of a single protagonist. Each character runs their own deck and energy pool, and combat is about coordinating four small decks into one battle plan. Multiplayer co-op lets up to four players each pilot one character, a feature few deckbuilders attempt and almost none execute well. Sixteen characters, multiple difficulty modifiers, and persistent unlocks give it a similar "one more run" pull to Balatro. Runs are significantly longer, with branching map paths and far more decision points per session.

5. Banners of Ruin

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Banners of Ruin is a squad-based deckbuilder with a Redwall-flavored cast of anthropomorphic animals. You build a party of up to six from a roster of species and classes, and combat happens on a two-row grid where positioning matters. The deck draws from every character in your party, forcing card-economy decisions about which characters pull their weight. It sits between Slay the Spire's tightness and Across the Obelisk's sprawl. The grid combat gives you the spatial puzzle that Balatro lacks.

Roguelike With Cards

These games are roguelikes first, and the card system is the lens. The structure feels closer to Hades or Spelunky than Slay the Spire, but cards are still the primary mechanic.

6. Inscryption

Platforms: PC, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, iOS, Android

Inscryption is impossible to describe without spoiling it. The first act is a tight roguelike card game played in a dimly lit cabin with a sinister opponent who demands sacrifices to summon your creatures. Then the game turns into something else. By the end you have played three distinct card games inside one experience. The overlap with Balatro is the dopamine of an oppressive scoring opponent: watching damage stack while you scramble for the right summon is the same nervous escalation as watching the required chip score climb each ante. Play it without spoilers.

7. Cobalt Core

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch, PS4, PS5

Cobalt Core is a space combat deckbuilder where positioning is everything. You pilot a small spaceship laid out as a horizontal row of parts, and combat is about lining up your weapons against the enemy ship while dodging their attacks. Cards move you left and right, fire shots from specific cannons, and manage shields. Three-character crews with their own card pools force you to mix archetypes every run. Cobalt Core is one of the most legible deckbuilders ever made, and the puzzle of "shift one tile left so my laser lines up with their reactor" is unlike anything else in the genre.

8. Wildfrost

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch, iOS, Android

Wildfrost is a timer-based deckbuilder with a frozen fairytale aesthetic that wraps brutal difficulty in deceptively cute art. Cards are units with countdown timers, and on every turn each unit's timer ticks down. The strategy is about manipulating timers, chaining attacks, and stacking companion synergies that let one tuned unit clear an entire enemy lane. The overlap with Balatro is the synergy snowball. The divergence is difficulty: Wildfrost is significantly harder than Balatro on equivalent stakes.

9. Backpack Hero

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch, iOS, Android

Backpack Hero is an inventory-management roguelike that uses cards as items inside a Tetris-shaped backpack. Where you place items in the grid changes what they do. A sword next to a whetstone deals more damage. A shield in the leftmost column blocks more. The puzzle is fitting the right items into the right adjacencies, and combat resolves based on what your backpack currently contains. The overlap with Balatro is the same buzz of stacking synergies: the choice of which items to keep and where to place them mirrors the Joker-buying decision exactly.

Casual Card-Luck

These games sit closer to Balatro's "shop and slot" feel. Less about meticulous deckbuilding, more about chasing dopamine through randomized synergies.

10. Luck Be a Landlord

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Switch, iOS, Android

Luck Be a Landlord is the closest mechanical neighbor Balatro has. You operate a slot machine, and every spin pays out rent that scales over time. Between spins you buy symbols and items from a shop, and your goal is to outpace the escalating rent. The synergy density is enormous: certain symbols multiply each other, some chain into combos, some destroy other symbols for huge payouts. The Balatro overlap is so direct that calling it inspiration is fair (Luck Be a Landlord actually predates Balatro). Cheaper than Balatro, hundreds of symbols, build variety that justifies dozens of runs.

11. Peglin

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch

Peglin is Peggle plus Slay the Spire. You aim a ball at a pegboard, and the pegs you hit determine damage in turn-based combat. Between fights you draft new orbs, upgrade relics, and customize your run toward a specific build. The overlap with Balatro is the physical satisfaction: watching a perfectly aimed shot ricochet through twelve pegs for massive damage hits the same nerve as watching a Joker stack score 50,000 chips. The divergence is the active skill component. Peglin asks you to aim. Balatro asks you to plan.

12. Dicey Dungeons

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch, iOS, Android

Dicey Dungeons replaces cards with dice. You roll a handful each turn and slot them into equipment that activates based on the values assigned. A sword might need a 3 or higher. A healing potion might need a pair. Six playable characters each subvert the core mechanic: the Robot bets dice on totals, the Witch slots dice into spell formulas, the Thief steals from enemy rolls. Each character is basically a different game. Five episodes per character give it enough content for a hundred hours.

Score-Chasers

These are the games where the run is structured around an escalating score. Most direct lineage to Balatro's "beat the required chips" feel.

13. Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles

Platforms: PC, Mac, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Astrea is a dice-based deckbuilder where every die has positive and negative faces. You buy new dice between fights, and your build is about tilting the probability of your pool toward your strategy while handling the occasional bad roll. The dual-faced design means every purchase is a tradeoff, which forces you to commit to a strategy rather than collecting strong individual pieces. The overlap with Balatro is variance management: both reward players who understand that maximizing average outcome matters more than chasing perfect outcomes.

14. Slice & Dice

Platforms: PC, Mac, iOS, Android

Slice & Dice is dice-based combat at its purest. You have a party of five heroes, each represented by a six-sided die with combat faces. Every turn you roll all five, optionally reroll, and execute the actions shown. Between fights you upgrade your heroes' dice faces. The game lives on one screen, the systems are tiny, and the depth is enormous. Both Slice & Dice and Balatro take a single mechanical idea, refine it to a glassy finish, and refuse to add anything that does not serve the core loop. Under five dollars on mobile.

15. Loop Hero

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Switch, PS5, iOS, Android

Loop Hero is structurally weird. Your hero walks an automated loop around a procedural map, and you place tiles into the world to control what they encounter. Forests spawn enemies. Villages heal. Vampire mansions create elites. Combat resolves itself based on equipment dropped from the enemies you placed. You are not playing the hero, you are placing the world the hero plays in. The overlap with Balatro is the meta-puzzle: both reward players who understand that run-level strategy matters more than moment-to-moment execution. Loop Hero is the most hands-off game on this list.

Make Your Own Card Game

If reading this list has you sketching Joker ideas on a napkin, that is a signal worth noticing. Balatro's lesson is that one designer with the right scoring system can make a hit, and the bar to prototype a deckbuilder is lower than almost any other genre. Summer Engine is an AI-native game engine compatible with Godot 4, and the Balatro-style deckbuilder template scaffolds the pieces that are actually hard: a poker hand evaluator, a Joker effect system, the Blind and ante progression loop, and a shop economy that supports synergy-stacking. The same folder includes a Slay the Spire-style roguelike deckbuilder and a general card-battler. See games like Wordle for puzzle inspiration, or how to make games with AI for the broader process.