The publisher wrote in an email to me, “I am very excited to officially ruin your productivity for the rest of the week and provide you with a key for Balatro.” And ruin my productivity it did, because quite simply, Balatro is a digital drug. This unassuming game, where you make poker hands into order to beat a set score, is addicting as hell. It’s like an onion, the deeper you go, the more layers you find. Balatro will get a Must Play with a ten back-end score. This will sit with site luminaries like Tux and Fanny and Army of Ruin, and it deserves it. But why? Why is a glorified poker game worth that score? Read on, and you shall see.
Balatro’s Unassuming Front
Above is Balatro’s game screen and it tells you all you need to know, at first. You get dealt eight cards, and you can either play, or discard up to five of them, If you play, you get scored based on the hand type, from High Card and Pair, to Four of a Kind and Straight Flush. Each card has an assigned value that should be familiar to people who play blackjack. Then the card score gets multiplied by a certain number based on the hand type. You get a certain number of hands and discards. It is game over when you run out of hands and you haven’t met the blind value. If you win, you win cash that can be used in the shop between rounds.
Balatro is divided into eight antes of three rounds each. Small Blind, Big Blind and Boss Blind. The boss blinds have special conditions, like clubs or spades are worth nothing. Or all cards played in the ante up until them or worthless. Or it could be a really high blind value(as you’ll see). In between each round, you get a shop, where you can purchase all kinds of special cards which do a whole range of things, that the next section will be devoted to. Now, if you lose, you start over from scratch. However, depending on the number of cards “discovered,”and other prerequisites, you unlock new deck types, vouchers and jokers.
The Onion
Now the special cards in Balatro, there are several types. There are 150 jokers, and you can have five at any time. Most of them effect the scoring somehow. One joker might raise the multiplier if you play odd value cards. Another, very powerful, Joker jacks up the multiplier if you have only it and no other jokers. But wait, there’s more. There are tarot cards, which do special things, like change card suits or create other cards. Planet cards raise the base value of individual hand types, and are very important to use early on, imo. Finally, spectral cards do interesting things and are relatively rare. One transform cards into special cards that do special things themselves. Foil raises the chip value, holographic raises the multiplier. There’s even a spectral card that copies a joker and destroys the rest.
But wait, there’s even more to Balatro: In the shop, you can buy packs of cards of all types even standard cards, as seen above. They come in regular size, jumbo size and mega sizes. The number of cards you select varies based on card type. You can also buy vouchers that do things like give you extra hands and discards and are permanent until you lose. You can skip the small and big blinds and get special tags that do special things, like create jokers and give you $15 if you beat the boss blind. Finally, you can peek at your deck at any time, and do card counting, which is pretty much required later on.
Goodbye Productivity!
Now add the previous section together, and you get one deep experience and countless strategies. However, one misplayed hand or discard could mean the end and starting over. But you’ll come back to Balatro, over and over again. One more round. One more ante. I stayed up late playing this game, and so will you. If I have to name a complaint, the price is a little steep at fifteen dollars, but considering Balatro will take over your life for a bit, it is well worth the money. Hats off to the one man development team, you created something great!
Overall: Balatro is an unassuming game that steals so much time, it is a crime. Absolutely amazing!
Verdict: Must Play
| Release Date | 2/20/24 |
| Cost | $14.99 |
| Publisher | Playstack Games |
| ESRB Rating | E10+ |
Game provided for free by the publisher!
Zom
I know a few people that have this game and it seems everyone cannot stop playing it. I will need to buy the physical if it gets one or I may rent the digital sometime.