I've never heard of this game until it popped up on the Game Awards nomination list for GOTY. And since I tend to have my ear pretty close to the ground of gaming overall, it's weird that a game I've never heard of is getting GOTY nominations. Typically, though I don't play many indie games, I do hear enough about the few each year that become break out hits thanks to their quality. Hollow Knight, Undertale, Dead Cells, all indie games I've got zero stakes or experience with, but have seen enough people talk about and play them that I can understand these are great games.
Balatro is the first game that just kind of appeared for me. So given the holiday weekend and the Steam sale, I got the game and decided to see what the deal is.
Turns out, the deal is Poker and not really much else. I mean there are plenty of things happening AROUND the poker, but it all boils down to poker still.
The way it works is this. The game is divided into rounds, of which there are blinds of ever increasing "score" requirements. Every 3rd round is a "boss" round in which something negative will be placed on your game to make scoring harder. For example, the game might deal all of your cards Face-down meaning you have to guess based on the order in which they've been dealt what they are (cards in your hand are ALWAYS sorted high to low), this debuff is very difficult, as is the debuff in which you can only play 1 type of poker hand for the round. Meaning if the first hand you played is two-pair because that's what you hand, then EVERY hand for that round must be two pair or you will not earn points for it.
Each round you are given a number of hands, and a number of discards. Hands are what you offer up to be scored and discards are throwing away bad cards for new ones in order to try and make better hands. If you've ever played casual poker (not texas hold'em) then you'll understand the basics.
Where Balatro starts to fuck with things is through the jokers. Every round you win you will earn money, and a visit to the store in which you can buy booster packs of cards, or single jokers. The Jokers are where the core concept of the game really comes into play, because these Joker's grant bonuses that you can stack in order to give you as many advantages to get high scores as possible. The Joker's offered in the shop are completely random and as you play the game you will unlock more and more jokers that get added to the "pool" of possible jokers that can pop up.
Before I get into the negatives and the real problem with the game. Let me explain the booster packs. There are effectively 5 types of boosters.
1. Card packs - which offer you the choice of added one random poker card to your deck. But these cards can also have modifiers on them like a King that grants 50 points instead of the normal 10.
2. Joker packs - just offers more random jokers to pick from.
3. Celestial Packs - These are planets that are connected to the various poker hands, and these consumable cards increase the base multiplier for a give hand. For example One pair, two pair, etc. And these planet cards can stack making your favorite poker hand have a higher base multiplier.
4. Arcane Packs - these are tarot cards that can do things like change some of the cards in your deck into a single suit, or add a special effect to one of the cards like the King getting 50 points mentioned above.
5. Spectral Packs - These are cards that tend to modify the jokers or do things to the jokers, like buffing one of your joker cards and destroying the rest at random. I stop picking these because they are seem to have way too high down sides for nearly zero real benefit.
So now that you know what's on offer, let me give you an example strategy that you might try.
Let's say the first Joker I get is the "A+ Joker", this joker provides huge bonuses whenever my scoring hand uses Ace cards. Meaning the more I get pairs, or better hands using Aces, this joker rapidly increase my point gain. So the plan now becomes getting Aces in my hand as much as possible. Which in where the booster cards come in. I can buy booster packs and hopefully get more Aces into the deck, and I can also use arcane cards to DESTROY cards in my deck that aren't Aces further making it more and more likely to have Aces to play all the time.
There are also normally 5 joker slots you can use in any given run. So while we might focus on Aces, we also want to grab jokers that benefit us in other ways so that we can still get a good point score even when there are no Aces available. So Joker's like Multiplier whenever you play Two Pair (which also counts in Full House hands), Increased chips (basic points before multipliers) whenever you use Face cards, etc etc.
Balatro has a lot of that RNG we've seen in other Rogue-like's such as The Binding of Issac, in which you might get a crazy combination of Jokers that just stack together beautifully and allow you to blitz through a run. But other times, you get a weapon that sucks, and nothing comes together and you fail. And you'll fail a lot.
This is where my biggest gripe with Balatro comes into play. The more you play, the more jokers you unlock, and the more jokers you unlock means the more scattered the joker's synergy starts to get. Meaning it becomes harder and harder to gather together a group of Jokers that work together in a good enough way that you can win. Unlike with other Rogue-Like games, there is NO way to out skill this game.
If you get a shitty weapon in Enter the Gungeon, your skill can still carry you through the game or at least far enough to maybe get a better one. In Balatro, that doesn't work because you aren't going against any computer, you are simply going against the score required to beat the round. And you cannot outskill math. If you don't have enough multipliers and point gain on your jokers, you cannot mathematically win. Not to mention you can outskill the RNG cards in your hand, if you get a bad hand that's it.
So often it feels bad to be 4 rounds into a run and know that you're never going to win, because you already see that your joker bonuses are all over the place and they aren't stacking right. You're finished, and maybe you can scrape together a few good hands to get through the next round or so, but the end is near and there is nothing you can do about it. It's very defeating in that way, because again if you get shitty weapons in Binding of Issac, you can still turn your luck around in the next few rooms and playing well. Balatro's entire gameplay loop relies on RNG luck that can only get worse the more content you unlock.
Balatro's play on poker is fun for a while, it quickly becomes a slog as you just hope that this run will be your lucky run. Good game and good idea, but GOTY? Nah.
Balatro is the first game that just kind of appeared for me. So given the holiday weekend and the Steam sale, I got the game and decided to see what the deal is.
Turns out, the deal is Poker and not really much else. I mean there are plenty of things happening AROUND the poker, but it all boils down to poker still.
The way it works is this. The game is divided into rounds, of which there are blinds of ever increasing "score" requirements. Every 3rd round is a "boss" round in which something negative will be placed on your game to make scoring harder. For example, the game might deal all of your cards Face-down meaning you have to guess based on the order in which they've been dealt what they are (cards in your hand are ALWAYS sorted high to low), this debuff is very difficult, as is the debuff in which you can only play 1 type of poker hand for the round. Meaning if the first hand you played is two-pair because that's what you hand, then EVERY hand for that round must be two pair or you will not earn points for it.
Each round you are given a number of hands, and a number of discards. Hands are what you offer up to be scored and discards are throwing away bad cards for new ones in order to try and make better hands. If you've ever played casual poker (not texas hold'em) then you'll understand the basics.
Where Balatro starts to fuck with things is through the jokers. Every round you win you will earn money, and a visit to the store in which you can buy booster packs of cards, or single jokers. The Jokers are where the core concept of the game really comes into play, because these Joker's grant bonuses that you can stack in order to give you as many advantages to get high scores as possible. The Joker's offered in the shop are completely random and as you play the game you will unlock more and more jokers that get added to the "pool" of possible jokers that can pop up.
Before I get into the negatives and the real problem with the game. Let me explain the booster packs. There are effectively 5 types of boosters.
1. Card packs - which offer you the choice of added one random poker card to your deck. But these cards can also have modifiers on them like a King that grants 50 points instead of the normal 10.
2. Joker packs - just offers more random jokers to pick from.
3. Celestial Packs - These are planets that are connected to the various poker hands, and these consumable cards increase the base multiplier for a give hand. For example One pair, two pair, etc. And these planet cards can stack making your favorite poker hand have a higher base multiplier.
4. Arcane Packs - these are tarot cards that can do things like change some of the cards in your deck into a single suit, or add a special effect to one of the cards like the King getting 50 points mentioned above.
5. Spectral Packs - These are cards that tend to modify the jokers or do things to the jokers, like buffing one of your joker cards and destroying the rest at random. I stop picking these because they are seem to have way too high down sides for nearly zero real benefit.
So now that you know what's on offer, let me give you an example strategy that you might try.
Let's say the first Joker I get is the "A+ Joker", this joker provides huge bonuses whenever my scoring hand uses Ace cards. Meaning the more I get pairs, or better hands using Aces, this joker rapidly increase my point gain. So the plan now becomes getting Aces in my hand as much as possible. Which in where the booster cards come in. I can buy booster packs and hopefully get more Aces into the deck, and I can also use arcane cards to DESTROY cards in my deck that aren't Aces further making it more and more likely to have Aces to play all the time.
There are also normally 5 joker slots you can use in any given run. So while we might focus on Aces, we also want to grab jokers that benefit us in other ways so that we can still get a good point score even when there are no Aces available. So Joker's like Multiplier whenever you play Two Pair (which also counts in Full House hands), Increased chips (basic points before multipliers) whenever you use Face cards, etc etc.
Balatro has a lot of that RNG we've seen in other Rogue-like's such as The Binding of Issac, in which you might get a crazy combination of Jokers that just stack together beautifully and allow you to blitz through a run. But other times, you get a weapon that sucks, and nothing comes together and you fail. And you'll fail a lot.
This is where my biggest gripe with Balatro comes into play. The more you play, the more jokers you unlock, and the more jokers you unlock means the more scattered the joker's synergy starts to get. Meaning it becomes harder and harder to gather together a group of Jokers that work together in a good enough way that you can win. Unlike with other Rogue-Like games, there is NO way to out skill this game.
If you get a shitty weapon in Enter the Gungeon, your skill can still carry you through the game or at least far enough to maybe get a better one. In Balatro, that doesn't work because you aren't going against any computer, you are simply going against the score required to beat the round. And you cannot outskill math. If you don't have enough multipliers and point gain on your jokers, you cannot mathematically win. Not to mention you can outskill the RNG cards in your hand, if you get a bad hand that's it.
So often it feels bad to be 4 rounds into a run and know that you're never going to win, because you already see that your joker bonuses are all over the place and they aren't stacking right. You're finished, and maybe you can scrape together a few good hands to get through the next round or so, but the end is near and there is nothing you can do about it. It's very defeating in that way, because again if you get shitty weapons in Binding of Issac, you can still turn your luck around in the next few rooms and playing well. Balatro's entire gameplay loop relies on RNG luck that can only get worse the more content you unlock.
Balatro's play on poker is fun for a while, it quickly becomes a slog as you just hope that this run will be your lucky run. Good game and good idea, but GOTY? Nah.
