Games like Balatro don’t come around very often. It’s the kind of experience that rushes through your mind until you can’t remember anything else, so you tell your friends about it, and then they tell their friends about it. In the end, through the sheer force of word of mouth, a game that seemingly came out of nowhere is now one of the clear frontrunners for game of the year. By the way, we are not even exaggerating; it’s really that good. It’s destined to be alongside Stardew Valley, Celeste and Undertale as one of, if not the a definitive example of its genre, and honestly, we’re annoyed that we haven’t heard it before.
If words like ‘roguelike’ and ‘deckbuilder’ fill you with dread, we understand, but bear with this one. Balatro is a roguelike deckbuilder built around the general concept of poker. The idea is that you have to use classic poker hands to build up your chips and beat the target score for each round (or, officially, ‘blind’). It sounds simple, and it really is — you don’t even need any prior knowledge of poker hands, as a quick tap of the ‘–’ button will open up a handy list of all possible combinations — but the challenge comes when the target chip count starts to rise.
Each card and each hand in poker comes with its own score and multiplier: an ace is worth 11; there are 10 picture books; all others are nominal value. The type of hand you play is then worth a certain number of multipliers: a three multiplies your score by three, while a full house multiplies by four. Leisurely. So what happens when you have a target score of, say, 10,000? Certainly cards worth only one digit cannot achieve that result. Well, that’s where the Jokers come in.
There are dozens and dozens of Joker cards that become available randomly during your runs in Balatra, and you can buy one or more between rounds with your winnings. Initially, you can only carry up to five slots at a time, but as you get deeper into the game, you can unlock additional slots as needed. Each Joker has a specific effect, so placing them on top of each other is one of the key ways you can significantly increase your score. So, for example, one Joker may apply a multiplier to certain suits, while another may apply a multiplier to hands containing three cards or less.
This means that, at least initially, the types of Joker cards available in your deck will significantly affect the type of hands you choose to play. Sure, it might be tempting to hit a full house with three aces and two kings, but if you have a Joker who favors three cards or less, simply throwing in three aces will yield a far greater result. Of course, the more time you spend with Balatra, the stronger your runs will become; it won’t be long until the Joker multipliers start to push your score into the millions and maybe even the billions. It’s seriously addictive stuff once it gets its claws.
But Jokers aren’t the only cards that can affect your score. You also have Tarot cards, Planet cards and Spectral cards. Good grief.
Each Planet card simply raises the level of a particular poker hand, increasing its effectiveness. Tarot cards are a bit more complicated: they can significantly change the type of cards in your deck. For example, you can change the color of the card, change it to a lucky card, a stone card, a gold card, and more. It sounds crazy, but the game does a great job of showing how a certain change can potentially affect your future score. Finally, Spectral cards offer more benefits, but often at additional cost. For example, you can significantly increase the effectiveness of one Joker card, but then all your others will be destroyed.
The real beauty of Balatro is that, as complex as the individual mechanics sound from our description, it really is one of the most accessible and instantly satisfying games we’ve ever experienced. We defy anyone with even the most basic understanding of card playing to dive in and not get hooked within the first half hour. Everything is meticulously designed to deliver consistent dopamine hits, and it’s honestly one of the strongest examples of the roguelike genre to date; the perfect remedy for those who normally shy away from this type of game.
This is only enhanced by the ability to play the game on Switch via manual mode. It’s still great to play on TV, of course, but Balatro is built to be picked up and played in short bursts, and handheld mode is perfect for that. You also have three input methods: you can use the right analog stick as a cursor, the D-pad to switch between tabs and options, or the full touchscreen. All three are viable, but we found using the D-pad to be the best method for us; however, we don’t want that screen to get dirty.
Visually, the Balatro strikes a beautiful balance of style and function. The basic layout is easy to figure out, with your Joker cards placed at the top, the Tarot/Planet cards to the right, and your selection of playing cards towards the bottom of the screen. All other information, including score, goal, and number of shares/rejects remaining, is displayed on the left. This is then enhanced with beautiful artistic flair, including a psychedelic color-changing background, an additional CRT filter, wacky designs for the Jokers and strings of numbers that flash in rapid succession while you have a strong poker hand. The music is also, while certainly simple, a soothing, addictive loop that’s sure to become a stubborn earworm long after you’ve stopped playing.
Conclusion
Balatro is a roguelike for gamers who don’t like roguelikes… and then everything else on top of that. It fully delivers on what it sets out to do, providing an instantly accessible, satisfying and addictive gameplay loop that anyone can grasp. It’s an immensely enjoyable experience right from the start, but as you dig deeper, there’s really nothing like it. We doubt we’ll hear much about Balatro when the talk turns to game of the year, as this is the clear and obvious front-runner. Extremely sublime.
