Balatro is obviously one of the best games from 2024, and now the dev behind it has shared what they think are the top titles from last year.
If you want to just kind of lie about it, 2024 was a quieter year than 2023 on the video game front, except it wasn’t because there were a ton of good titles that came out, they just couldn’t all afford expensive advertisements like the triple-A ones could. Our own team highlighted some of our favourites, but we weren’t the only ones to do so. One of the biggest surprises from 2024 was easily Balatro, a clever little roguelike poker game that’s all about making number go big, and a title that many of us sunk way too many hours into. So, to spread some of that indie love around, Balatro developer LocalThunk took the time to outline their own favourites from 2024.
Taking the number one spot with LocalThunk’s own “very prestigious Golden Thunk award for Game of the Year 2024” is Animal Well, a metroidvania that definitely stands out on its own merit, though admittedly one you might know best as being the first game that that horse V-tuber or whatever he is Videogamedunkey published under his new company Bigmode. “Animal Well was an engrossing experience,” wrote LocalThunk. “Dripping with style, secrets, and making me feel like an imposter in this industry as a dev, Billy Basso created a true masterpiece.”
The love didn’t stop there though, as there were some runner-ups too, like Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, which LocalThunk said: “People mistakenly wrote this off as a Balatro clone but this was announced before my game ever was. A beautifully synergistic and strategic deckbuilder I have sunk dozens of hours into.”
Arco, Nova Drift, and Ballionaire got some nods too, alongside Mouthwashing, one of my favourite games from 2024, with LocalThunk saying, “I didn’t even know this was a horror game when I started playing it at 11pm one fateful night. I was hooked instantly, and both the world it created and the poignant message woven into the game stick with me vividly months later.