Balatro is one of the best deck-building roguelikes I have ever played. Utilizing a deck of playing cards, poker hands, guile, and wit you’ll attempt to build the best combos imaginable to overcome increasingly difficult odds. I have fallen in love with this title, playing it all day, and thinking about it when I’m not.
Joker
Balatro is a simple title. You will play hands of poker to try and beat a score, known as a blind. To do this you’ll earn modifiers. These modifiers can affect individual cards, be modifiers for how much each specific hand scores, or change how your joker cards work. The joker system is where Balatro shines. There are 150 different joker cards to unlock and the default setup allows for up to five jokers to be active at any time. Alongside your joker card unlocks are various card decks, each with its own unique modifier. The first deck lets you have an extra discard per round, while the second gives an extra play, and so on.
Balatro has used early access on PC to perfect its carrot-on-a-stick progression and moment-to-moment gameplay. Games start with you choosing a deck and difficulty. The in-between round Store is where you’ll build up your modifiers, jokers, and deck each run. Depending on how many turns it takes you to earn enough points, alongside said modifiers you’ll get cash at the end of each round you are successful in. You’ll spend that cash at the shop to get a random selection of jokers, planetary cards, tarot cards, spectral packs, and more. It sounds like a lot at first but the game does an excellent job of slowly introducing you to each new mechanic.
Planetary cards will increase the score multipliers and chips that specific hand nets you. The game is all about winning enough chips in a set number of plays. Fail to match the blind (score) and it’s run over. To increase how many chips you earn you’ll need to pair jokers together to up your multipliers. Tarot cards can add extra abilities to your playing cards, give you other items, help you earn more cash, and more. After ten minutes I was hooked on the seemingly endless feeling of variety in how I could approach each run. One time I had my two pairs (have two matching sets of cards) so powered up that I could one-shot most levels with a single play.
If you have no clue how poker works the game does a good enough job of teaching you what types of combinations you need to shoot for. My first Royal Flush (having the same suit of a 10, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace) after using my last discard and only having one play left was a hit of dopamine few other games have ever matched. Let me try and break down how each hand feels to play, and the chess-like thought processes that go into them.
I’ll start by describing a run as I play it. As I open the title on my Xbox I am taken aback by how damned cool the CRT and pixelated look works. It’s bright and colorful, yet somehow ominous. As the deck of 52 flies into a melting joker a midi-synth jazz tune hits. It’s the same one you’ll hear for dozens of hours playing and it just freaking works. The first thing I see after choosing a new run is the shop. In the middle are two slots which can contain jokers, tarot cards, and planetary ones. In the bottom left is an ante voucher, tied to each of the game’s 8 levels. This voucher will make powerful Foil, Holographic, and Polychrome cards twice as likely to show up in the shop. The final two slots are occupied by card packs which are randomly chosen from tarot, planetary, and playing card varieties. I buy a Joker with my measly $6 and start up a hand.
I select to play a small blind. Each ante (level) has three stages, the first two being randomly generated from a choice of small and big blinds. This small blind is 300, with the 2nd stage being a big blind of 450. The third stage is a boss stage, this one being “The Window”. For that stage, all Diamond Suit cards are debuffed, AKA you don’t score any chips with them. I choose a small blind and am greeted by eight cards in my hand. I have 4 hands to play, and 4 discards to use. My cards are one ace, two jacks, a ten, then 3 through 6. At this point, I can choose which of up to 5 cards I want to play or discard. I use the Joker as a pair and gain 60 chips out of the 300 I need.
What will you discard, what will you play, that’s the main gameplay in Balatro. Ten minutes later I’m deep into this run, having worked my way up through to level 6. I have 5 jokers, they give me:
- X4 multiplier on any even number card played
- X20 multiplier when I play 3 cards or less
- An extra 95 chips per play. This decreases by one on every hand
- 1 extra hand per round (combined with my blue deck I now get 6 in total)
- A flat x4 multiplier
I’ve used dozens of planetary and tarot cards to power up my multiplier and chip payouts on 3 of a kind and 2 pairs, along with adding multipliers for score and chips to various cards. It’s a deep, engaging system that never feels the same from run to run.
Accompanying all of this is a gorgeous art style. It’s not pushing any boundaries, and I could see this game running on a ten-year-old phone with little issue. Still, it looks and sounds great. There isn’t a wide variety of music in Balatro. Thankfully the main song is relaxing and catchy enough that even after dozens of hours of listening to it I was never bored.
Wrapping Things Up
Balatro is my new gaming obsession, I frigging love it. Deckbuilding roguelikes have had some phenomenal games over the years. Balatro reaches the lofty peak of Slay the Spire and has me hooked even harder than that incredible game ever did. You should buy it, now. Buylatro!
Review | Balatro
Played on
Xbox Series X (Primary) and Steam
PROS
- Challenging
- Deep
- Beautiful
- Soothing Sounds
- Rewarding
God damn, that sounds amazing. Straight into the wish list.
Up there with Slay the Spire? Then I need to try this.
Balatro
Not much of a poker guy but this seems pretty cool. Might grab it depending on the price (don’t see it on Steam yet)
I think it’s $15, not 100% sure.
Sounds like a buy to me then! Thanks, Jesse.
Edit: It is indeed fifteen bucks, but it’s currently 10% off on Steam for $13.50. Full price for Xbox and Switch and I don’t even see it on the PlayStation store.
Second edit: Great site design, PlayStation. Searching for the game name doesn’t work but punching “PlayStation Balatro” into a search engine brought me to the page. Full price too, but there’s a one-hour demo with PS+.
Just had my first win! Died on ante 10.
Had a Two Pair build that worked nicely. Had the Joker that upgrades it’s multiplier everytime the played hand contains a pair early on so that helped a lot. Also had the x3 multiplier Joker everytime you play a poker hand already used, so I was just spamming two pairs in the end.
Great game!
Card games. They will never, ever, ever be for me.
I’m not a fan of poker or roguelites, but this is pretty great!
It’s stupidly addictive. And I’ve only won once!