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Steam Next Fest is in full swing, and when I'm not sailing the high seas in search of pirate survival adventures in Windrose, I'm diving headfirst into the big pile of Balatro-like deckbuilders that are showcasing new demos.
As always, there's a bunch of developers hoping to strike Balatro-sized jackpots by twisting well-known games using magic morphing multipliers: I've played demos that use chess, billiards, pachinko, roulette, slot machines, coin pushers, gashapon… even a few that are just doing poker again.
♟️ Balatro but it's chess: Gambonanza
I was dubious for a second because Gambonanza's main menu is so deeply Balatro-fied you can even drag the chess piece around the screen, same as you can the ace of spades. But the game quickly establishes its own style and personality and I wound up replaying it a whole bunch of times.
On a tiny chessboard you face off against the computer with just a few chess pieces that move in the standard ways. But after each mini-match you can spend money to enchant tiles and purchase gambits that will change the rules. Create phantom pieces, make pawns move like kings, even duplicate a piece when it gets captured… after a couple hours, I'm still finding new ways to enchant my board and arsenal. The bosses I've seen are distinctive and fun, like one that makes several of its pieces uncapturable for most of the match (that's him at the top of the page). The experience is hurt a tiny bit by how dumb your CPU opponent sometimes is, but I frankly needed all the help I could get.
🪙 Balatro but it's a coin pusher: Raccoin
Published by Playstack (same as Balatro!), Raccoin replicates an arcade game even a gambling enthusiast like me would never stick a quarter into: the coin pusher. Pump coins onto the playing field, hoping it'll get crowded enough to push more coins into the basket, and increase your abilities between rounds. Add special coins to the mix: some stick to other coins creating a huge lump of value, some crawl around mating with each other to make duplicates, some explode knocking others into the basket.
Raccoin bills itself as "a coin-pushing dopamine machine," and I sure can't argue with that. It's satisfying as heck seeing those coins pile up and drop, and there's tons of amusing powers that can spawn UFOs, laser beams, and black holes. You don't have to wait long for the full game, either: it's out March 31.
💣 Balatro but it's Minesweeper: Coinsweeper
Balatro made poker better by adding magic, and Coinsweeper makes Minesweeper better by—and this is really important—letting you bail out in the middle of a grid. Because we've all been deep into a Minesweeper run and hit that point where you've got a really risky 50/50 click, right? In Coinsweeper, you can retire mid-round, losing out on a complete score but salvaging what you've got. Big improvement.
This is absolutely Minesweeper, perhaps not loaded with depth but fine for chilling out and clicking bricks for a while. It's got tons of purchasable items like mine detectors and mine diffusers, plus lots of modifiers for streak bonuses and cash multipliers. I dig it.
🎱 Balatro but it's pool: Ultrapool
Initially it felt a bit basic: you knock balls into holes to score, and can upgrade and combine your pool balls, as well as increase a pocket's multiplier to raise your score each round. But there's something enjoyably tricky about Ultrapool, too.
To reach the rising total you need to advance, it would seem natural to add more balls to the table, because more balls means a higher score. But you also have to keep your rack pretty lean because you only have a certain amount of shots per round, and if you can't sink every one of your balls, you lose. It makes for a nice balance, I think, and the game is also pretty forgiving, letting you try again if you fail a level instead of immediately banishing you to start over.
🅰️ Balatro but it's Scrabble and made by the guys who made Goldeneye and Timesplitters: Beyond Words
I didn't have "The makers of GoldenEye and TimeSplitters are publishing a Balatro-like word game" on my 2026 bingo card, but why the heck not? Steve Ellis and David Doak, whose studio was shut down by Embracer in 2023, were looking to make something less intensive than a new FPS—so instead of guns they're now dealing in tiles with letters on them.
Beyond Words uses a Scrabble-like joined word system combined with Balatro-style modifiers. It didn't immediately pull me in as much as games like Watchword or Word Play, but it feels stuffed with potential: truly massive grids to spell words on, loads of modifiers and multipliers to put to use, and over 30 bosses to defeat.
🎴 Balatro but with hanafuda cards: Rogue Hanafuda
I wasn't familiar with hanafuda cards, and the demo doesn't do anything to explain them, but it turns out Rogue Hanafuda mostly operates like poker so it's not all that hard to grasp. You can only play two cards per hand until you've earned enough money to unlock more, and between rounds you can purchase stackable items that give you big bonuses and abilities that come with drawbacks (like allowing you to play an additional card while removing one of your discards).
This is a very bare bones, no frills game, but I got sucked in and played for a full half-hour before I finished the demo. Try it out if you're looking for something like poker that isn't quite poker.
🎰 Balatro but it's gashapon, and also it's not really Balatro: Capsulitas
I'm including Capsulitas because I thought it was a Balatro-like, but it's kinda not, and also because I became strangely invested in it. It's a gashapon-style game where you buy little capsules from a machine and then stick them into an extremely limited inventory to help your chances of scoring higher and spending less the next round.
What is so entrancing about stuffing rocks into my pack, polishing them for a few rounds until they become more valuable, then selling them so I can afford more capsules? I have no idea. But I did it so much that I was soon rolling in dough, and I am absolutely going to do it again.
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