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With its satisfying card designs, gratifying multipliers, and occasionally stratospheric high scores, Balatro has cemented itself as one of the all-time great dark horse games. A single developer turning poker into a roguelike deckbuilder and taking the world by storm is a story for the ages, and as with all great successes, we may soon start to see a flurry of games that riff off of its concept. Well, here’s one of the very first Balatro-likes, Aotenjo, which takes the popular game of mahjong and gives it that roguelike twist. It’s just hit early access, and already players are singing its praises.
Balatro was so novel and so addictive that we crowned it our 2024 Game of the Year – maybe, just maybe, Aotenjo has the same special sauce to make it one of the top games of 2025. Even though it swaps out the traditional playing cards and poker hands for mahjong tiles, it follows the same basic premise. You have a hand of tiles that you can discard and swap for more agreeable ones, you’re hunting for sets and pairs to rack up your score and multiplier, and a range of special items and modifiers are at your disposal to give it that ultimate roguelike feel.
In classic mahjong, the tiles come in three basic suits of dots, bamboo, and characters, which are all numbered one to nine. There are also two other groups of tiles known as honors and bonuses. Honors are split into four winds (north, south, east, and west) and three dragons (red, green, and white). Essentially, you keep discarding, drawing, and playing these tiles to make melds (which are kind of like the hands you get in poker) – for example, a ‘pong’ is made up of three identical tiles, while a ‘chow’ is three tiles of the same suit in numerical sequence.
If you’ve never played mahjong, that might look like gibberish to you, and that’s understandable. But I know plenty of folks who’ve never played poker that have sunk unspeakable hours into Balatro.
Aotenjo takes these basic principles of mahjong and plugs them into a similar, super satisfying roguelike gameplay loop. It’s also inspired by multiple regional variations of mahjong, so it doesn’t just stick to the classic rules, but what it does do is encourage you to get strategic and rack up delicious high scores.
Aotenjo has a lineup of 144 artifacts, which are the items you collect to modify your matches and improve the scores your tiles earn you. To further push replayability and variety, there are over 100 patterns in the game, which are essentially different tile sets that include their own overarching gameplay modifiers.
Despite being out for only a matter of hours at the time of writing, players are already gassing up Aotenjo and leaving plenty of positive Steam reviews. Of the 95 user reviews it’s received so far, it is sitting on a 96% very positive rating. It’s also got an impressive roadmap of content that it plans to roll out in early access, which should make the game even better.
Aotenjo is out in Steam Early Access right now. If you want one final Balatro similarity – it’s super affordable. There’s a 12% launch discount running from now until Sunday, February 2 that makes the game just $8.71 / £7.48. To grab the game, or to read some of the developer’s super helpful beginner guides, head to its Steam page here.
For some similar thrills, you can also take a look at our list of the best card games on PC. Or if you want to find more under-the-radar gems, check out our best indie games list.
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