Balatro: Roguelite Poker

Between finishing FF7 Remake last week and having nothing to do (besides work) until Rebirth's launch on Thursday, this past weekend was expected to be a pretty chill weekend. Maybe catch up on some of the work for my Amazon certification course, watch some videos, do some laundry, etc. You know how it goes.

That was until I sat down to eat lunch on Friday and stumbled upon a Datto video while eating lunch, where he was playing a new poker-esque game that looked interesting. I watched a few rounds while eating, and as I was cleaning up I decided to open the Steam app on my phone to see how much it cost. To my surprise, there was a launch sale! Only $12.

Fully knowing that with both the FF7 games and my XIV subscription already blowing my games budget for the month sky-high out of the water, I decided against my better judgement to pick up Balatro as well. I put it on my Steam Deck, sat down on my couch after work, and gave it a try.

Fast forward a few days and now my entire apartment is addicted to this damned digital card game. How did this happen? Let's find out.

For the uninitiated, Balatro is a roguelite deck-builder game. What this means: You start a run with a standard deck of 52 cards, trying to play the best cards you can within a certain amount of hands and discards. The higher the rarity of the hand you play, the higher its base value and multiplier will be, meaning more chips earned. If you earn enough chips to meet the round's quota before running out of hands, you progress onto the next one. Simple, right?

Between rounds you get access to a store, where you can spend the money you earn on cards or booster packs which can modify your deck. There's many changes that you can make depending on what's for sale; You could add more face cards to the deck, convert everything to a the same suit, make certain cards worth more chips, etc. You could make your deck go above 52 cards, or below. Anything's possible if you can make it work.

In addition, you can collect joker cards while you play, cards which aren't a part of your deck but still grant boons that that can help your hand. For instance, the Crazy Joker adds +12 multiplier to your hand if it contains a straight. The Four Fingers Joker allows you to make straights and flushes with only 4 cards instead of 5. There are a total of 150 different jokers in the game, and you can (typically) use any combination of 5 at a time.

Every 3 rounds you play against a random "boss blind" that has a special mechanic attached to it to make it harder, in addition to its already higher quota. Some examples: your starting hand could be drawn face down, or you could be required to play 5 cards a a time. Every time you defeat a boss blind you increase the ante by 1 and restart. Clear ante 8 to win the game.

And that's only scratching the surface. Every time you complete a run with certain criteria met, you unlock more jokers to toss into the mix. There's also vouchers, planetary cards, tarot cards, spectral cards, foil & holographic modifiers, different starter decks and more that make this game so interesting and ensure each run is different from the last.

I've always been a huge fan of roguelite games designed in such a way that they feel like they're taunting you, telling you "Go on, try and break me. I dare you." Risk of Rain 2, Inscryption, and Hades; all exceptional games for this exact reason. Some of my most memorable video game moments were in these games: discovering Proc Chains in RoR2, or making an invincible Ouroboros in Inscryption. Over the course of three days, Balatro has swiftly and easily earned itself a spot at that table.

If you're a numbers guy— mathematician, software developer, data scientist, etc.— this game's absolutely for you. I live with an accountant, right? When I first mentioned the game, he laughed it off and joked that I was "kickstarting a gambling addiction," but later that night when I was playing on the TV downstairs, he, myself, and my girlfriend were all on the edge of our seats collectively strategizing on how to craft a deck that would score us upwards of 500k in one hand.

For one game, we had a solid Two Pair/Supernova/Constellation deck going that took us to ante 11. On another run we converted the entire deck to diamonds, to ensure we had a flush every single hand even if a boss blind turned our cards face down. Just after writing the first draft for this post, I sat down and played a game that took me up to ante 12 with a best hand worth just over 22 million chips.

The game's honestly so simple to pick up, and yet it's simultaneously one of the most in-depth and well implemented roguelites that I've played in years. Balatro's shorter than most other games and has a save-game feature so you don't have to worry about blocking out upwards of an hour for a run, which makes it perfect for playing in short little bursts. Not to mention, it's perfect for the Steam Deck and I can definitely see myself playing it for entire plane rides in the foreseeable future.

I think the only mistake this game made was not launching on mobile. Balatro would make a killing if it launched on iPhone and Android. It's already made so much from word of mouth alone, selling over 250,000 units in under 72 hours already. Lord knows how much they'd make off of bored office workers alone.

Also, as of writing, syncing between devices with Steam cloud isn't the cleanest. Some people are complaining about save data conflicts, and I've found that Profiles 2 and 3 don't sync at all. I trust it'll be ironed out within the next few days, so I won't really count it against the game.

Balatro is a 10/10, no questions asked.

Seriously, pick it up if you haven't already. It's cheap enough that it won't break the bank, but it'll easily become one of your new favorite card games. I'm definitely keeping a tab on the game's developer, LocalThunk, from now on. Here's hoping their next game is even more of a banger than this one is.

Balatro costs $15 and can be found on every major game platform: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Steam (with support for Windows, MacOS, and Linux via Proton). This game was reviewed on both Windows and Steam Deck. For more info on how I rate games, click here.