If you have been following The Lance as of late you might have seen fellowes writer Colin Meinert’s article on Block Blast. While an excellently written piece on the game that I would recommend if you haven’t, I would like to introduce a game that I would consider even more addicting than the likes of Block Blast, and that game is a little mobile card game called Balatro.
This poker-influenced roguelike may appear straightforward at first, but take the risk of picking it up, and its ludicrously fun gameplay loop won’t let you put it down. -- Simon Cardy, IGN
What is Balatro
Balatro is a poker based card video game created by LocalThunk. The game was released on February 20, 2024 on consoles and PC to widespread acclaim before later receiving a mobile port on September 26, 2024. The game would even go on to be nominated for game of the year in the 2024 Game Awards, while also winning Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game.
How the game plays seems simple at first, but is deeply complex below the surface. In the game, you are given 8 cards drawn from a standard 52 set deck of playing cards. You must then assemble a poker hand along standard poker playing hands, ie. Two Pair, Flush, Straight, etc. Each hand you play scores a variable amount of points, with rarer hands, such as a Full House, scoring more than more common hands, such as a pair. You are given 3 discards and 3 plays, using which you must beat a score using your points.
The game divides itself into rounds, being Blinds and Antes. In order to win, you must beat Ante 1 through 8. Within an ante is 3 blinds, which steadily increases the points required to beat it. Within an Ante is a small blind, big blind, and boss blind with a special and challenging condition. Each blind within an Ante gives you more money, with small blinds giving less money than boss blinds. You also gain money through your hands left at the end of a blind, as well as an extra money for every 5 money you have.
Each hand type gives a set value of chips, as well as mult. Each card played within a hand increases the chip value by its value, such as a 7 of clubs giving 7 chips when scored, while a face card (kings, queens, and jacks) gives 10 chips. In order to beat the game, however, you must continuously increase both your mult and chips to keep beating blinds. That is where the game starts to get more complex.
Bigger Numbers
The actual playing of cards is only half of Balatro. The other half is deck building. In order to beat Ante 8, you need to continuously improve your deck, and the primary method of doing so is through Jokers. Jokers are special items that you can get through various means, but the primary method is buying them using money from the shop after beating a blind. Your selection of Jokers is randomized, but you can pay extra to reroll them. Jokers range from simple, such as giving you +5 mult,+20 chips on hands such as straight, or just giving +3 money when beating a blind, to more complicated, a random amount of mult between 1-23, sacrificing a joker to add mult to it, or retriggering the first card played multiple times. Jokers are your primary method of scaling up, so learning how to synergize them and getting the right ones is important.
Also in the shop are booster packs. Booster Backs can be purchased to give you a random selection of various card types, such as Jokers or playing cards. However, they also include other types of usable cards, such as planet cards, which can be used to upgrade hand types, Tarot cards, which can be used to primarily modify cards, such as upgrading their rank or converting suits, and Spectral Cards, which offer powerful effects with often random drawbacks, such as duplicating a random joker while destroying all the others. As all of this is random, you must be able to adapt quickly in order to keep up.
The other two options available to you are vouchers and decks. Vouchers are expensive items that you can buy in the shop, which apply for the rest of your run. Their effects are varied but consistent, such as increasing the chance to find planets or tarots in the shop, or giving you an extra joker. Vouchers are refreshed after starting a new ante, so you usually can cycle through if you don’t get the one you want. Decks, meanwhile, are chosen before starting a run, and give various effects, such as +1 discard or hand, or no face cards in your deck, or straight up completely randomizing the rank and suit of cards in your deck.
But Wait, There's More
Not only is there tons of deckbuilding to be done with your Jokers and what not, there is also a lot to be done to your deck. Cards can be given modifiers to alter what they do. First are enhancements, such as extra mult or chips when scored, multiplying your total mult at the risk of being destroyed, or giving mult when held in hand but not played. These can wildly alter how you play and build your deck, incentivizing increased build crafting. The next is seals, such as retriggering a card, generating a tarot when held, or a planet when discarded. Finally, cards can have editions, giving powerful effects like extra mult or chips. These can also be applied to Jokers, with a special edition, negative, which gives an extra Joker slot, only being available to Jokers.
In order to fully illustrate how addicting Balatro is, let me illustrate a particular run I had a few days ago. Now bear with me, this is going to be a bit technical. So I started a run with the yellow deck, which gives +10 money when started. Upon starting, I skipped a few blinds, allowing me to get a rare joker off the bat. Now, this Joker, the throwback, gave me x0.25 mult for every blind skipped. Since I had good scoring, I was able to get multiple blinds. I also got lucky and was able to begin creating multiple glass kings.
Later in the run, I got the hanging chad, which retriggers the first card played two times, Sock and buskin, which retriggers all played face cards, Photograph, which gives x2 mult for the first face card played, which retriggers using Sock and Buskin and Hanging Chad, and The Trio, which gives x3 mult if hand contains Three of a kind. Now, this means that using glass jokers, each glass king played stacks multiplicatively, which on top of the final double x3 from my other Jokers, allowed me to score over 9 million chips, crushing my final ante easily with a measly 100 thousand chips.
Gambling Addiction
This, I hope, illustrates why Balatro is so addicting. Because everything is up to chance, unless you use a seed, no two games are the same. Even though most games I crash and burn early, it makes it worth it for runs like that. Even though it honestly isn’t that hard, because you are the one who was able to adapt and come up with an insane combo, you feel such a sense of gratification from crushing a blind, and since you made a combo you’ve never even thought of or could even though could work before this point, you feel so smart when you do it.
That is on top of the superb sound design. The music loops seamlessly in a masterfully made background track. The way the chips and mult ding over and over triggers such a dopamine rush, especially in higher antes as it racks up more and more as the stress builds up wondering if your going to beat the blind or not, it keeps you coming back.
Overall, Balatro is an amazing little game. There is so much hidden under the surface for you to discover and experiment with.
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