Balatro (2024)

It's like a typical deckbuilder roguelike, but without the feel of adventure and random heavy.

You have 30 min to spare, get addicted to play 1-2 hours in a row and then realise all you did is number crunching and probability calculations. Feeling hollow.

But I learned that Google Play gives instant refund in 2 hour window from purchase, so I used that and got my money back.

For me "addictive" in reviews of games turned from positive into a red flag lately. I'm looking for fulfilling games now, that make you feel like you've filled your gaming need and make you want to go do something else for a while without cravings or taking up mental space.

I've played a lot that I didnt really enjoy or find that good but my three other favorite rogue/deckbuilders are Inscryption and LoopHero. All three of these games go their own routes but Balatro is the most fundamentally simplistic yet chaotic. It has a kind of elegance that the other two do not have. However, it also is easy to get a bit burnt out of because it is indeed so repetitive. However, it is genuinely fun to try new things and experiment in this game.

Balatro isn't for everyone. (Like I said it can get repetitive and after a weekend of playing it i'm kinda close to a wall in my enjoyment with it) But to those that write this off as a mere parlor game, or don't find it worth the attention, i dare you to find another game that has mechanics this solid, with as many variables and with so much experimental. I often think about game design and what I would do if I were to make a game. (I have had some good ideas I even dare say!) But, I cannot for the life of me ever imagine making something like this that 'works.' I have played bad deckbuilding games that do not have balance, and have problems, have gimmicky exploits... It's not an easy thing to make.

Managed to win three times with three very different decks and strategies. Every game I win I've continued with endless mode and am met with the wall at 7.2 million... I imagine there are things that can be unlocked to bork the game more but I dont know if I'll ever put the time in to get there.

I was skeptical that this game could be good as I didn't like the poker theme and thought it was maybe a little lazy for it. Boy, I was wrong. I hope Balatro inspires designers for years to come and we see more games in it's likeness that take the approach they did with poker and apply them to who-knows-what other game concepts. Chess, Tetris, who knows!? The possibilities are endless!

What can I say that hasn't been said already? It's an incredibly addicting and fun rogue-like card game that uses poker hands as its main focus. I somehow spent almost 50 hours on this game in just 2 weeks from how much fun I was having. I decided to mark my "end" point as when I unlocked all decks, and got to a gold stake on at least one deck which I finally did today. I then transferred it from my PC to my tablet and I will probably be playing it every now and then when I'm bored.

All that being said, this is a simple yet lovingly made game that is incredibly addicting and fun. What else do you need?

Playtime: 1h45m (one session)

Intro

In Balatro you have to score an X amount of points. You do this by playing poker hands. Each card is worth bits equal to the points on the card, with face cards worth 10. The value of the hand is combined and put through a multiplier. Throughout your run you get upgrades that have various effects like increasing the bit value or the multiplier. You play or skip two normal games then face a "boss" that has a special effect like "hearts count as 0 bits" or "face cards are hidden".

Review

I don't like poker. To me it's one of those boring basic games like chess, patience (solitaire), mens erger je niet (parcheesi) or the like. However, i do like taipan (tichu) which is sort of a 2v2 poker game with 4 special cards and some other rules. So this could really go either way. Sadly, Balatro is just poker. It's a more clever and more varied version, but it's still just poker. And i don't care for poker.

Also, almost all variety comes from "number goes up". You can't really "build a deck" and the game will assfuck you with boss powers if you try. Meh.

Oversimplified opinion: Addicted rouge like and I love playing cards. It's the Guitar Hero of poker

Sub-genre: Rogue like, deck builder, trippy

Favorite part: Finding a broken deck build with high cards

Rating: 4/5

Review: Haven't been this engrossed / fueled by a game since Slay The Spire. Simply put I love 52 deck playing cards and this game's look just hits all my high points. I also love how simple the gameplay is, meaning if I ever want to pick it up again I won't have to go through a few runs re-learnign the rules and whatnot.

I do wish there were other background selections, music choices, and further balancing to make anything other than flushes early game possible.

Overall will forever be playing this game.

It's been a couple weeks now and I think I can collect my thoughts about Balatro without feeling like it's too soon.

This game absolutely slaps. It's like, in big RPGs there's sometimes a side mode with some random games that will sometimes be more fleshed out(triple triad, gwent, etc). Balatro is like if you made one of those be a whole-ass game. It is so tightly designed and balanced. The game is super easy to learn, enough that you understand everything you need to before you even finish your first run.

Aesthetically, the game is simple enough but still fun. The many jokers are pretty silly, the effects and animations garner oohs and ahhs, and the trippy visuals paired to the music create this "Tetris effect" like trance that draws you into the game and helps you focus on everything at hand. The UI is surprisingly well done. Pressing ZL shows you a hot menu with a graph showing how many of each card you have by rank and suit., - shows you different poker hands for reference(plus their level and how many times you played each), and ZR shows you a full page detailed view of your deck(both remaining cards and total). The developer really considered what information the player would find useful in their decisions in the game. I might even say this part of the game is underrated. It allows the player to have a very solid understanding of the current state of the game and informs them well enough to make intelligent choices for how they would like to manipulate the RNG in their favor.

Another thing I really appreciate about this game is how interesting the decisions it presents to you are. Each hand played takes careful consideration of your remaining deck, active jokers, and any other upgrades you might have. Of course, you need to build your deck to be future proof to harder challenges you haven't yet reached. This is one of the most essential aspects to the gameplay: grooming your deck and focusing on making all your jokers and cards synergize as much as possible. The increasing difficulty means that you will always be thinking about what your deck can do better, as any moment where you realize your deck works well is not far from a boss blind that will really demand your deck performs to higher standards. All this on such a simple design based on playing poker hands. This is some genius level game design. It's only been a couple weeks since I started playing, but I can tell this game is one I will keep coming back to, watch for updates from the developer, and it will definitely top my best "best of 2024" list. It's really that good.

Balatro is a remarkably fun and addictive poker roguelike. Its math-driven mechanics are intuitive and clearly presented while offering a surprising depth and range of possible strategies.

Solid foundational ideas on top of the poker stuff like simple resource management, transparent scoring, and the “Joker” perk system keep the game feeling skill-expressive and fair while at the mercy of randomness. Jokers are where a lot of the run-by-run variance comes in, letting you synergize different additive and multiplicative bonuses to shape your approach to that run.

Jokers and other smaller upgrade systems, consumables, and deck-building opportunities are tightly woven together into a highly compelling web of short-, medium-, and long-term decision making. You’re building up to some big numbers at the end of a run, but the low-scoring early game is just as interesting. You start with simpler options, maybe committed to something specific or maybe not, and will slowly fill your wallet and improve how your “build” scales and survives as greater challenges appear.

Winning with five different starting deck modifiers grants access to a list of interesting challenge runs with unique pre-set rules. Additionally, wins with a particular starting deck unlock progressively harder modes for that deck, and may also unlock another deck. It is quite a lot to unlock and “grind” through for those who want it (too much for me, but I’m glad I keep unlocking stuff at least). The pace of unlocks keeps the game fresh, expanding the possibilities and constraints to play with while ensuring that the player is neither overly hamstrung nor overwhelmed early on.

Presentation-wise it’s simple in a good way, staying out of its own way but still having an identity and clean, recognizable iconography. The core gameplay is really quick and snappy to engage with thanks to that minimal approach. Little usability things are my main complaints, like I wish text was larger in Switch handheld mode, wish some Jokers with changing effects didn’t require repeatedly hovering over them, etc.

There’s not much really significantly wrong with this game otherwise, at least for those playing it casually—I do hear that higher difficulties make it a bit too hard to get a run off the ground, but I haven’t got there and don’t know how deep I’ll dig in. In any case, this is easily one of the most fun roguelikes on the market and one of the best recent indie titles.

It's still pretty early to give a proper opinion, but I really liked this. It's not perfect like I thought it would be with the demo since it seems to lean on a lot from Slay the Spire. The stakes (difficulty system) are really pretty harsh, and it seems very hard to ever come close to consistent wins there. Lots of runs will just die so early if you don't get anything to help you survive. I think doing the highest difficulty really did drain me from how helpless it feels. It also just feels like such an excessive grind for each deck to have its own stake progression. 15 different decks (a good number of them are really interesting though), each with 8 stakes, is kind of insane when I compare it to the two big games I've spent the most time on: Monster Train with 12 (2 dlc) different champions all sharing the same progression up to 25 covenant ranks, or Slay the Spire with 4 (1 new) characters and 20 ascension levels for each. Since these decks need you to unlock stake levels too, it made me feel like I should incentivize 1 deck rather than going for the variety like in MT (rotating every champion to 25).

The unlocks lean more on that too, with some strange out there requirements that pretty much force you to go look up each one if you truly want to get everything and set up your run in a specific way while hoping to get lucky. Not to mention, you can also sticker every joker at every stake level (insane). I ended up winning with every deck at various stakes and got a couple of decks up/at to max (lvl 8), but I didn't really go for insane scores. I can see just playing lower stakes and going for score/variety being a lot more fun. Anyway, this is only after about a week of playing, and I'll definitely get back into it in the future since there are other games I want to play. Maybe I'll go back and joker/voucher hunt the final ones. Maybe it was better to just get every joker before going to stakes. Maybe there will be some new stuff to see, and they will ease up on some of the other things.