20 Recent Indies That Put AAA To Shame

Playing modern AAA titles can sometimes make you feel like a guinea pig for exploitative business practices. Instead of delivering quality products, everyone’s "favorite" developers, such as Ubisoft or Electronic Arts, would rather create psychological mechanisms that hook you on their games, like battle passes that instil a sense of FOMO or flashy loot boxes that will make you want to keep playing to see the next drop.

Luckily, one of 2024’s biggest indie commercial hits, Balatro, shows that you don’t need psychological tricks to get people addicted to your product to sell 1,000,000 copies of your game in just one month. You just need a good idea and an even better execution.

On the surface Balatro looks like a regular card game, where you try to build the strongest hand possible to progress to the next round. However, in reality, Balatro is an insane rogue-like deck-builder in which you collect more and more ludicrous cards to eventually break the game’s scoring system!

The game’s visuals, addicting but easy-to-learn gameplay, and most of all, its incredibly high replay value have made it a global success in 2024, hooking millions of players, both casual and experienced, and absolutely smashing all of its competitors.

If you somehow haven’t played, to say you’re missing out is an understatement!