Looking For A Game That's Like Balatro with Words? Check Out Birdigo

I didn’t know birds were so good with words. Other than, you know, “polly wanna cracker.”

Developers John August and Corey Martin released back on July 30th, a brand new roguelike card game, Birdigo. Birdigo is all about migrating birds and is inspired by games like Wordle and Balatro. In Birdigo, you have a series of letters and they each will give you a certain amount of points. It’s very similar to Scrabble, if you’re familiar with the popular board game. And like Balatro, you have a certain score that you must meet in order to beat that round so you’ll have to plan carefully what letters and words you’ll use. 

Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, as you progress you’ll notice that there’s loads of ways that Birdigo changes up the gameplay. As you play, you’ll collect Bird cards that can modify your regular letter cards in a variety of ways. Some cards encourage you to use words of a specific length while others want you to use certain letters. Get the right combination of letters and you might just be pulling off some really high scoring words. 

Every few levels you’ll have the opportunity to spend your hard-earned cash in order to buy additional cards. Feather cards, for example, permanently change specific elements of the game, like Jokers in Balatro, unless you remove them from your game. Additionally, you can also upgrade cards in your deck permanently changing their color and giving them unique properties like being scored twice. 

I’ve been jumping back to Birdigo pretty regularly, much like how I go back to Balatro at least once a week, just to try my hand at getting a high score. I’m much better with words than with numbers or poker so this one is a bit more up my alley. If you’re a fan of this genre or if you like word games, Birdigo should be on your radar. 

Birdigo is available now on PC.