A lot of things are impressive about Balatro, but possibly the thing that impresses me most is that it isn't afraid to be a game qua game. There is no player character. The numbers are not "health". You absolutely do not walk across a fantasy map battling stock rpg monsters. You are not, after each stage, treated to a voice actor reading the next three sentences of the sentimental story about grief and family or whatever the Story Department wrote while the Gameplay Department was making the gameplay. You are you, and you're trying to win a game, and you may come out of it with stories but they'll be yours and true.

A story can be integral to a game, but only if it _is_ integral to the game. The story might be very good and even have a very clever in-narrative rationalization for why it is interrupted by puzzles, but that does not necessarily integrate them. More creators should examine what it is they really want to make, and what that does and doesn't actually require.