Balatro Review – How to Make Poker Even Cooler

It’s not quite clear why no one has made a game like Balatro before. Card-based roguelikes have been around for a very long time: two parts of Hand of Fate were released, Don’t Starve authors released Griftlands, and Slay the Spire sold an insane amount of copies. But in the vast majority of cases, the developers of such projects were inspired by collectible card games like the ones Richard Garfield worked on.

But a loner under the pseudonym LocalThunk went the other way – he took an ordinary deck of playing cards, took the familiar rules of poker and created an ingenious “roguelike” on the basis of all this.

Poker, but not poker

At first it’s simple: we start the game, choose the small blind and have to score a specified number of points to advance to the next level. Two things affect the number of points: the seniority of the cards and the combinations. The older the card, the more chips you’ll earn per turn – twos are obviously much weaker than tens.

And a combination not only adds some chips to the total, but also multiplies that number. As in poker, some combinations are stronger than others – it’s better to collect a full house than to be limited to one or two pairs.

At the beginning of the deal, we are dealt eight random cards, and you have to accumulate the sum in a limited number of moves. You can discard up to five cards so that they don’t appear in this round and are replaced by others, but you are only allowed to do this a few times. The same with revealing cards – you can’t earn the specified amount of money by getting a little bit of points for pairs or threes ten times in a row, as the moves are usually half as many. And for each unused move you get bonus money, which comes in handy in the store. But more on that later.

The role of jokers in the game

It sounds like ordinary poker with unusually big hands, but after the first blind the most interesting thing starts. You are dealt your first joker, a card that you don’t play and which hangs at the top of the screen with a passive skill. There are 150 jokers in total in Balatro, and they are what make each run different from the previous one.

Some jokers give bonus chips when straight cards are played, while others increase the multiplier if there are spades or clubs among the revealed cards. There are those that give bonuses for cards with even or odd values, and one of the jokers constantly changes the multiplier – in one round it multiplies the number of chips by 20, and in another does nothing.

These are just the most banal examples – there are a lot of non-standard jokers that change the rules of the game, and you can carry up to five of them with you. The success of the next race largely depends on how good jokers you got in the first rounds and whether you can build your strategy around them for the next hour.

For example, one of your jokers increases the multiplier when playing diamond cards, which means that you should try to play all combinations with them in order to pass the next test in one or two moves. And the other joker significantly increases the multiplier when playing aces, twos, threes, fives and eights. If you manage to collect a diamond flush with these cards, you will get so many points that each level will be overcome at the first attempt.

Of course, with a limited number of resets to get such a combination is difficult, and then you start to use the local analogs of cheat codes. The money mentioned above, which you get for passing each stage, can be spent both on jokers and on sets of cards (simply put, boosters). They come in different types: there are regular sets, there are Tarot cards, there are spectral cards, there are planet cards – all of them either give bonuses or change the deck. For example, you can turn one selected card into another. Or remove a suit from a certain card to make it suitable for any flush. Or make a card older – turn a deuce into a three and a queen into a king. Or destroy two cards so that you never see them again.

You can make the cards glass – they increase the multiplier, but there is a chance that when you play them, they will break and disappear. You can make them steel – they give a bonus if they are in your hand when you play other cards. You can put red, purple or gold stamps on them – depending on the conditions, they will give gold, Tarot cards or bonus multipliers.

The possibilities are many, and the limited resources require the player to not only spend money thoughtfully, but also to plan their actions during the games. If your joker gives you a planet card when you discard certain cards, maybe you shouldn’t win on the first hand. Or if you’ve collected a straight, but one of the cards gives you a bonus when in your hand, maybe it’s better to discard and find an identical card.

Aces up your sleeve

All of these options, coupled with the “passives” of jokers, have a significant impact on how your deck looks by the end of the run. If you’re hunting for aces, half of your deck is aces with different modifiers by the sixth round (you have to complete eight to pass).

You focus on number cards, destroying and transforming all kings, queens, and jacks. Or you focus on buying Tarot cards (one of the jokers permanently increases the multiplier every time you use such cards). Or you have a joker that multiplies chips when playing combinations rarely used in a particular race. Play the highest card ten times so that the game considers it your favorite “combination”, and then alternate between straights, flushes, and pairs with threes and fours.

Of course, not all runs are successful. Weak jokers are offered, synergy cannot be found, and money cannot be earned quickly. However, this is true for any roguelikes. When everything goes as it should, Balatro’s emotions are the same as those of the best representatives of the genre.

Every time it’s fun to watch the number of chips grow, the multiplier increase, and the jokers that give bonuses and increase the amount earned per move. If the combination is particularly strong, a light appears above the numbers, by which you can even before the end of counting to realize that you have passed this test. The main thing is to turn on animation acceleration in the settings, or sometimes you have to wait a long time.

During the few days I spent in Balatro, I had a lot of funny situations. In one run, I took a joker that created a Tarot card when each hand was played if there were no more than three dollars in my wallet – it seems overpowered, as these cards can change the deck significantly. And by midway through I saw a joker in the store that increased the multiplier for each Tarot card used – I didn’t expect such a gift, but the already fun run became even more fun. In another situation, I bought a joker with which all cards played are considered “face cards” – that’s what the King, Queen and Jack.

This allowed me to earn ten chips for each card, even if it was a deuce. And not long after that, the store had a joker that gave you five dollars every time you flipped the “face” cards. The money started pouring in, and I not only passed the required eight stages, but also had a chance to try my hand further – after the eighth round the endless mode starts.

Roguelike infinite mode – the difficulty increases very quickly

In many roguelikes, the endless mode causes only boredom: the character develops slowly, you visit the same locations, and no new enemies appear. In case of Balatro, there are neither locations nor enemies – here you just keep breaking the bank and collecting jokers, so, logically, the process should be even more dull. However, in reality, the endless mode doesn’t take as long as it seems, as the complexity grows very quickly – after a few stages you will be required to earn millions of chips with several hands.

Even before the eighth round it’s clear whether you’ll be able to earn such amounts with the current jokers, multipliers and modified cards, so the ninth round and beyond is more of a chance to try your hand at optimizing your chip earnings over a few more stages. If you didn’t make it far, fine, you’ll get better jokers next time.

The only passage will show not everything that is available in Balatro. First of all, here you constantly unlock new starting decks – some of them give you bonus discards, others allow you to start the race with a good amount of money, others contain only two suits of cards instead of four, and so on. Secondly, numerous tasks give you access to new jokers, which never appear in the store until they are completed.

Many “Challenges” are performed randomly – for example, you need to drop a specified number of cards or never play a particular combination in one run. And there are different levels of difficulty – for those who find ordinary runs too simple. By the way, each run is given a number – you can share it with the community, if your run was particularly exciting, and other users will see the same jokers in their stores. “Achievements” will not be earned this way, but for those who like to hunt for big numbers, this is the perfect entertainment.

The fact that Balatro was going to be a big success was already clear with the release of the demo – although there was much less content, players spent dozens of hours in the “demo”, and the players published a lot of videos on YouTube. If a small piece of the game was so interesting to the community, the full version had every chance to become a hit. Balatro added to the impressive list of roguelikes that can make your sleep patterns go haywire for weeks and your work idle – until you’ve gone through the game with all the decks and unlocked all the jokers, you won’t rest easy. Expect content updates – hundreds of thousands of users have already bought the game, so Balatro’s future is probably very bright.

Advantages:

• An original idea based on classic poker;
• One hundred and fifty jokers, which significantly influence the passage and make each run unique;
• Numerous possibilities to modify and remove cards allow you to create unique decks by the end of the race;
• Many jokers and decks are unlocked after completing tasks, which encourages you to play the game again and again;
• Perfectly realized endless mode – not dragged out and interesting;
• Pleasant visual style and relaxing music.

Disadvantages:

• Like any card game, mercilessly eats up free time.

Gameplay Mechanics

Graphics

Simple, but stylish and tasteful – it’s especially nice to watch the animations of jokers and cards when the system calculates the result.

Sound

Although such games are played while listening to podcasts and your own music, here the soundtrack cannot but be praised – very calm tracks, to which even playing the game is not so frustrating.

Single-player game

There’s only one mode, as in most roguelikes, but with different decks and other changing conditions, each playthrough is different from the previous one.

Estimated playthrough time

One successful run will take a little more than half an hour, but that’s just the beginning – at least 50 hours will definitely take the game away from genre fans. However, this prediction seems too underestimated.

Collective play

Not provided.

Overall Impression

A great card-based roguelike that took poker rules as a basis and developed them in an unexpected direction. It would seem that after Slay the Spire this genre will not surprise anyone, but independent developers continue to come up with cool ideas.

Score: 10/10