For her last video games column of the year, Miguelle-Éloïse Lachance discussed 2 games which received awards during the 10th Game Awards ceremony, hosted by Canadian Geoff Keighley, which took place on December 12 in Los Angeles.
The game Astro Bot, developed by studio Team Asobi and published by Sony on the PlayStation 5, won the game of the year award.
On the other hand, the game that particularly attracted the attention of the columnist is Balatro, an independent game created by LocalThunk, a Saskatchewanian who prefers to remain anonymous.
It won three awards, including Mobile Game of the Year, Best Independent Game, and Best Debut Game from an Independent Studio.
LocalThunk expected to sell only a few copies and then return to his IT job, but the game reached the milestone of 3.5 million copies sold in less than a year.
In the game, one must form poker hands to win a certain number of chips.
You have a limited number of hands you can play to achieve the objective, as well as a limited number of times you can discard cards to draw new ones. The number of tokens to be won increases each round.
We earn virtual money with which we can buy different types of cards to help us achieve these increasingly higher goals.
In particular, there are the jokers, emblematic cards of the game. Balatro also means jester, clown or jester in Latin.
To win as many rounds as possible, you must, among other things, choose jokers that have a certain synergy.
- / Miguelle-Éloïse Lachance
Jokers have different effects, for example, they can give extra chips for each spade card played, allow us to have more cards in our hand, or give us extra money when we meet certain conditions.
