- Release Date: 20th February 2024
- Developer: LocalThunk
- Publisher: Playstack
- Platforms: PC, Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series Mobile
- Version Played: Android
Personally, I’m not a fan of roguelikes at all. I’ve tried popular ones like Dead Cells and Hades and they’re just not for me. However, I was house-sitting for a few days, had £10 of Google Play credit and thought perhaps giving the central another chance could be a good idea, especially as Balatro was essentially a card game and perhaps that context would make more sense.
And, to me, that was absolutely correct. Whenever you play a card game, you start from scratch every time and reset everything when you’ve finished, and that’s sort of a key component of roguelikes. The powers you get are dependent on drawing them from a deck of shuffled cards and it all makes sense to me due to Balatro being a card game.
And, due to this and how well Balatro is made, I ended up loving the game, and on mobile it’s something that is wonderful to play when you’re somewhere and have an hour or so to kill. The mobile interface is great, with you moving and dragging cards around as you need them.
So, the game itself. In its simplest form, you play hands of poker. You draw some cards, can discard some and once you’re happy you play your hand. Better poker hands yield higher points (usually) and you have to reach a certain score within so many hands played, with the number or discards you have shared across thee hands.
However, there’s so much more to the game as you need to manipulate both the cards and your points. You can buy special cards (or upgrade them with tarot cards) from shops between rounds and these can increase the multipliers of your points, provide more points, give you money for the next shop or other neat effects.
But the biggest impact on scores are the Joker cards. These can also be purchased from the shop and the tactics you go for will massively depend on which Joker cards show up. I managed to get my first win with a simple but powerful one called Cavendish, which triples your score, and my best score so far was with a Joker that gave you a multiplier based on how many of a certain card type in your desk alongside one called Blueprint, which lets you duplicate another joker. My multiplier was over triple, and it happened twice.
For a run to count as a win, you need to beat 8 antes. Each ante consists of two regular rounds and a boss encounter, which has a nasty negative effect for that round, either limiting what you can play or neutralising certain cards. The points you need to reach increases exponentially, so the scores reach an insane number of digits, especially after the “win” points.
On top of a high score to work around, there’s also plenty to unlock. Certain special cards and jokers will only appear in the pool of what’s available once you meet certain conditions, meaning you have to play in new ways to unlock them. You also start the game with different decks, giving you different starting powers, with one ultimate goal to win the game with each deck. Then there are additional difficulties to unlock. There’s enough here to make the game last for years.
And, on mobile, it really is something you can just boot up every now and then, either for just a round or to work on something to unlock. Really, my only criticism of Balatro is that it would be nice if the mobile version had a portrait mode to be a bit more comfortable to play. But then the game might be a bit too accessible and too addictive.
Great
