When you look at the gaming landscape today, it’s so vast and deep that it becomes hard to find new games you might want to play. Not so much because they don’t exist, but because you just don’t hear about them. Balatro is a case of this for me. Oh, I know there will be those who will have followed the game’s development since its inception and were ‘there before it was cool’, but I’m frankly too old to care about what the cool kids think anymore.
I’m more concerned with playing games I like, and Balatro is most definitely a game I like. This is a bit surprising, as when my friend told me it was a poker hand roguelike deckbuilder, I was concerned he may have just had a stroke. Random words were showing up in his message to me.
Well, medical attention was not necessary, and this was in fact what Balatro was. It’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll do my best to explain the basics, without completely spoiling the journey of discovery you’ll go on while playing this game.
Shop for Upgrades between Rounds.
The poker element is fairly straightforward. Balatro begins with a standard deck of playing cards. A round of Balatro follows this basic flow. Play poker hands to score as many chips as possible. Reach the Blind’s target score and you will earn money. If you have five dollars or more of unspent money at the end of a round, you will earn an additional dollar for each five dollars, up to a total of five extra dollars. You then take that money into the shop, and spend it on Jokers, Tarot, Planet Cards, Booster Packs, or Vouchers. Then you move on to the next round, eventually culminating in the Ante’s Boss Blind, which will have its own challenge to overcome.
These come in the form of hindrances that you’ll have to work around. You might have a certain suit’s cards be unable to score chips, or play only one type of hand, or have cards drawn face down so you can’t see them. If you complete the Boss Blind, you move onto the next round, and continue on your way to completing the eight Antes.
The style is reminiscent of that old poker machine sitting in the corner of the bar. The game even lets you adjust or turn off CRT effects to enhance that aesthetic, should you so choose. The poker-machine aesthetic isn’t just a stylistic thing, though. Balatro is a single-player game. You’re playing poker hands to earn chips. The chips you earn go towards meeting a Round or Blind score. The further you go into the game, the higher these scores become.
Stacking the Deck.
That’s where Balatro’s main mechanic comes into play. Unlike in other games, the Joker cards play a crucial part in helping you reach those scores. You begin the game with space for up to five jokers. Each of these cards will impart an ability whether it’s adding chips to your current hand, increasing your multiplier so those hands score more, giving you money, or a huge number of other effects. Since each playthrough is random, experimenting and finding which combination of jokers works best is all part of the fun. There are many games that try to implement a trial-and-error mechanic, but one of the reasons it works so well here is because poker is such a well-known quantity. When you know how things ought to work, it becomes a lot more fun to play around with different modifiers that fundamentally change the game.
While you’ll begin with a standard deck, no jokers, and a pocket full of change, that’s not your lot. Balatro also contains Tarot cards to modify existing cards, grant you new jokers, or level up your poker hands by spawning Planet Cards which you can then redeem. Spectral Cards are similar to Tarot cards, but may have a risk associated with them. For instance, you can use the Grim Spectral card which will destroy one random card in your hand, but gain back two random enhanced Aces.
Finally, there are passive bonuses that take the form of purchasable Vouchers which will grant you benefits like extra turns, better cards available in the Shop, or more Interest from unused money between rounds.
All of the outlined mechanics have much more nuance and intricacy to them, but it’s best I leave that to you to discover, as that’s a big part of the enjoyment. What is worth mentioning is that by now, you have probably picked up on Balatro’s biggest divergence from traditional poker. The deck is mutable, hence the deck building aspect of it. Want a higher chance of making big hands, get rid of low-ranked cards, upgrade high ranked cards, and get multiple copies of cards.
On a nice run!
And that is when the game all starts to click into place. The crux of Balatro’s gameplay. It’s in plain sight, but still takes people with poker knowledge a while to figure out. Balatro is all about figuring out the most effective way to cheat. The House Always Wins, but when you’re playing Balatro, you have the opportunity to stack the deck in your favor. It’s a balancing act between picking out Jokers, enhancing your cards, maybe skewing your deck toward a particular suit, and doing your best to avoid Boss Blinds that negate your preferred suit’s cards.
What you end up with, then, is a game that is very simple to start playing, and very, very difficult to stop. It absolutely has that “One More Round” addiction factor. It also does this without micro-transactions or other live-service nonsense. Balatro is a complete game. You buy it, and you play it, and play it, and play it some more.
I could not end this review without touching on the few elements of the game I could see improving, or at least, would hope they would improve. Firstly, having a dark mode interface for all tooltips and hud elements would be nice. Some of the contrast on the UI is a bit low and difficult to read. Blind scores are a good example of this. Tooltips being dark would be a nice addition as well. The biggest one I’d love to see is a Black card deck, I have one of these in real life and they’re really nice.
Balatro is an absolutely fantastic little game. It didn’t cost two-hundred million dollars to make. It doesn’t feature a cast of stellar voice actors. It doesn’t push the limits of modern gaming hardware. In fact, coming in at less than 64MB, it may be one of the smallest games released in a long time. None of that matters, though, because barring the few accessibility concerns I had above, Balatro does exactly what it sets out to do. It’s easy to pick up, but has much more depth and nuance than one might expect.
When you look at the gaming landscape today, it’s so vast and deep that it becomes hard to find new games you might want to play. Not so much because they don’t exist, but because you just don’t hear about…
When you look at the gaming landscape today, it’s so vast and deep that it becomes hard to find new games you might want to play. Not so much because they don’t exist, but because you just don’t hear about them. Balatro is a case of this for me. Oh, I know there will be those who will have followed the game’s development since its inception and were ‘there before it was cool’, but I’m frankly too old to care about what the cool kids think anymore.
I’m more concerned with playing games I like, and Balatro is most definitely a game I like. This is a bit surprising, as when my friend told me it was a poker hand roguelike deckbuilder, I was concerned he may have just had a stroke. Random words were showing up in his message to me.
Well, medical attention was not necessary, and this was in fact what Balatro was. It’s a lot to unpack, but I’ll do my best to explain the basics, without completely spoiling the journey of discovery you’ll go on while playing this game.
Shop for Upgrades between Rounds.
The poker element is fairly straightforward. Balatro begins with a standard deck of playing cards. A round of Balatro follows this basic flow. Play poker hands to score as many chips as possible. Reach the Blind’s target score and you will earn money. If you have five dollars or more of unspent money at the end of a round, you will earn an additional dollar for each five dollars, up to a total of five extra dollars. You then take that money into the shop, and spend it on Jokers, Tarot, Planet Cards, Booster Packs, or Vouchers. Then you move on to the next round, eventually culminating in the Ante’s Boss Blind, which will have its own challenge to overcome.
These come in the form of hindrances that you’ll have to work around. You might have a certain suit’s cards be unable to score chips, or play only one type of hand, or have cards drawn face down so you can’t see them. If you complete the Boss Blind, you move onto the next round, and continue on your way to completing the eight Antes.
The style is reminiscent of that old poker machine sitting in the corner of the bar. The game even lets you adjust or turn off CRT effects to enhance that aesthetic, should you so choose. The poker-machine aesthetic isn’t just a stylistic thing, though. Balatro is a single-player game. You’re playing poker hands to earn chips. The chips you earn go towards meeting a Round or Blind score. The further you go into the game, the higher these scores become.
Stacking the Deck.
That’s where Balatro’s main mechanic comes into play. Unlike in other games, the Joker cards play a crucial part in helping you reach those scores. You begin the game with space for up to five jokers. Each of these cards will impart an ability whether it’s adding chips to your current hand, increasing your multiplier so those hands score more, giving you money, or a huge number of other effects. Since each playthrough is random, experimenting and finding which combination of jokers works best is all part of the fun. There are many games that try to implement a trial-and-error mechanic, but one of the reasons it works so well here is because poker is such a well-known quantity. When you know how things ought to work, it becomes a lot more fun to play around with different modifiers that fundamentally change the game.
While you’ll begin with a standard deck, no jokers, and a pocket full of change, that’s not your lot. Balatro also contains Tarot cards to modify existing cards, grant you new jokers, or level up your poker hands by spawning Planet Cards which you can then redeem. Spectral Cards are similar to Tarot cards, but may have a risk associated with them. For instance, you can use the Grim Spectral card which will destroy one random card in your hand, but gain back two random enhanced Aces.
Finally, there are passive bonuses that take the form of purchasable Vouchers which will grant you benefits like extra turns, better cards available in the Shop, or more Interest from unused money between rounds.
All of the outlined mechanics have much more nuance and intricacy to them, but it’s best I leave that to you to discover, as that’s a big part of the enjoyment. What is worth mentioning is that by now, you have probably picked up on Balatro’s biggest divergence from traditional poker. The deck is mutable, hence the deck building aspect of it. Want a higher chance of making big hands, get rid of low-ranked cards, upgrade high ranked cards, and get multiple copies of cards.
On a nice run!
And that is when the game all starts to click into place. The crux of Balatro’s gameplay. It’s in plain sight, but still takes people with poker knowledge a while to figure out. Balatro is all about figuring out the most effective way to cheat. The House Always Wins, but when you’re playing Balatro, you have the opportunity to stack the deck in your favor. It’s a balancing act between picking out Jokers, enhancing your cards, maybe skewing your deck toward a particular suit, and doing your best to avoid Boss Blinds that negate your preferred suit’s cards.
What you end up with, then, is a game that is very simple to start playing, and very, very difficult to stop. It absolutely has that “One More Round” addiction factor. It also does this without micro-transactions or other live-service nonsense. Balatro is a complete game. You buy it, and you play it, and play it, and play it some more.
I could not end this review without touching on the few elements of the game I could see improving, or at least, would hope they would improve. Firstly, having a dark mode interface for all tooltips and hud elements would be nice. Some of the contrast on the UI is a bit low and difficult to read. Blind scores are a good example of this. Tooltips being dark would be a nice addition as well. The biggest one I’d love to see is a Black card deck, I have one of these in real life and they’re really nice.
Balatro is an absolutely fantastic little game. It didn’t cost two-hundred million dollars to make. It doesn’t feature a cast of stellar voice actors. It doesn’t push the limits of modern gaming hardware. In fact, coming in at less than 64MB, it may be one of the smallest games released in a long time. None of that matters, though, because barring the few accessibility concerns I had above, Balatro does exactly what it sets out to do. It’s easy to pick up, but has much more depth and nuance than one might expect.
by Filippo Dinolfo
