Xbox fans hyped by new free game: 'the hype is warranted'

One of the best games of 2024 is now available for free on Xbox, and you better hope you don’t value having spare time if you dare to download this one.

Thank you in advance to IGN's Rebekah Valentine for the original story!

At the ID@Xbox showcase last night, we got the one announcement that Xbox players have been waiting for since 2024; Balatro is now available through Xbox Game Pass.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Balatro, let me do my best to explain it to you. It’s like poker, except it’s also a rougelike.

Every playthrough offers different strategies to help you beat the infinitely increasing points threshold. For instance, you can get a joker that lets you pull off straights easier, you can add/remove cards from your deck to make it more consistent, or you can enhance your cards so they’re worth more points.

In reality though, that’s not really what Balatro is about.

Avowed also recently landed on Xbox.

The real aim of the game is to make the numbers go as high as possible, so you get a massive dopamine hit from creating a score so large that the game quite literally cannot register it and you see that magical phrase “naneinf” pop up on the screen.

Over on the r/Xbox subreddit, every single comment is unreasonably gassed about the game hitting Xbox Game Pass.

“Everyone needs to play this,” commented user equinox5005, “Trust me the hype is warranted. This game is addicting as f**k.”

“Huge get for Game Pass,” replied user StrngBrew, “I already have it on mobile and Steam. Was literally thinking I might just get it for Xbox as well. The game is so good.”

Look, I feel it’s important to warn you that this game is a huge time-sink. I don’t like to throw the word “addictive” around too much, but Balatro is possibly the most engrossing game I’ve ever played.

There’s been several times where I’ve booted up for a quick 20-minute game in the evening only to notice that it’s 3am after what felt like an hour.

I’m just warning you so you know what you’re getting in for, because nothing else in your backlog is getting touched for a solid month after you boot up Balatro for the first time.