Dice of Kalma hits a million downloads across mobile, showing Balatro-likes still have legs

• Dice of Kalma has hit over a million downloads across all platforms
• It represents the latest major success for the Balatro-like genre
• The game sees you playing for your soul against the god of death

The Balatro-like has become an increasingly popular subgenre over the past couple of years, and it's been especially lucrative for developers on mobile. Now, Dice of Kalma is the latest deckbuilding roguelike to hit a million downloads across both iOS, Android and Steam in another impressive milestone!

Dice of Kalma is a simple take on the Balatro formula, pitting you against the Finnish god of death in a classic battle for your soul. But unlike the Seventh Seal, you won't be playing chess; you'll be rolling dice and trying to form poker hands to reach increasingly more ludicrous numbers.

Death's a stumbling block

Dice of Kalma features all the usual aspects you'd expect from a Balatro-like, with an omnipresent main opponent, modifiers both inherent to each run and acquired by buying 'skulls' that boost certain types of hands or grant other bonuses. Not to mention a genuinely quite eerie, retro atmosphere.

It shouldn't be a surprise that I think Dice of Kalma is well worth playing. But I'm also one of those people who's got a healthy amount of scepticism towards any genre that's explosively popular as Balatro-likes. It feels as though it's a matter of time before we see a course-correction.

Whether that'll be because bigger developers and studios, with less distinct ideas, start dipping their toes in or simply because the sheer number of them gets to be too much is anyone's guess. Hopefully, we won't see it happen like that, and games like Dice of Kalma will continue to offer a familiar but interesting twist on an established formula.

Speaking of games which really have had a huge influx of interest from developers both big and small, though, why not check out our list of the best mobile games like Vampire Survivors to see some of our favourite picks from that genre?