Driving Rogue: Balatro brain, street-racer heart

Here's a pitch that shouldn't work: an arcade street racer that's also a deckbuilding roguelite. Driving Rogue has you weaving through traffic in a shifting city, chaining drifts, near misses and impossible gaps to keep your combo alive, then picking modifier cards and upgrades between races to build a run around stuff like Nitro and Ghost. Beat rival Rogues and you get to drive off in their cars, each with its own handling.

And it does work, gloriously. The driving is easy to pick up and hard to master, and the 'one more run' pull is very real. Some folks have already 100%'d it a week after launch and keep going. There are Redline leaderboards to climb, online co-op with friends, the option to load your own music playlists, and a Steam Deck Verified badge that makes it a great commute game.

A few dents in the bodywork: not everyone loves the UI, the look of the cars or every track on the soundtrack (that's what the custom playlists are for). There are only a handful of city districts so far, and some find runs get repetitive. If you want online co-op, bring your own crew rather than hoping for strangers. Oh, and it's only a week old, so the hype is fresh.