Balatro (2024, Multiplatform)

Developer: LocalThunk
Publisher: PlayStack
Clear Version: PS5
Clear Platform: PS5
Clear Date: 3/11/25

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Why should I care?
Balatro borrows old, well-understood mechanics to create a roguelike worthy of the overused “addictive” label.

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Rare Joker approaching

Before anyone yells at me for saying “roguelike” above instead of “roguelite” or whatever please know that I do not care what the distinction is, and also “the poker roguelike” is literally the description of this game on the PlayStation 5 dashboard.

With that out of the way, let me just say this game rips. Everyone already knew that before me, of course, but I wasn’t sure I’d dig it so much. Well, I do. I downloaded it for free because I had some PlayStation Stars rewards points, and I figured zero dollars was worth risking on a highly-touted game I wasn’t sure was for me.

This shit got me good. My confidence was bolstered by winning on my second attempt (hence this post), and I think I’d’ve had a chance at winning my first go if I’d understood the rules a little better. From there, though, I found the variety of decks, “stakes” (difficulty levels), and challenges more than interesting to keep playing run after run. Embarrassingly, I think one sleepless night I spent roughly eight consecutive hours with it. What the fuck!

It’s pure number-go-up goblin shit, which I usually consider myself “above” (whatever that means). If you don’t know how it works, basically you play a series of “antes,” which are scores you have to meet within a set number of hands. You draw eight normal playing cards each round and build the best regular ol’ poker hand you can with what you have. Each hand is worth a certain chip and multiplier combo. Your goal is to match the ante number of chips.

Naturally, these antes scale up as you go. To keep up, you can buy special cards between rounds that increase the values of poker hands, modify your cards to give them bonuses, etc. Most importantly (or at least most iconically), you can also purchase Jokers, of which you can stock five under normal circumstances. These guys juice the hands you play far more than the other basic upgrades. Some incentivize playing certain hands by dramatically increasing your chips or multiplier when played, others increase your cash flow for future shop visits, and others modify the very rules of the game. For example, one particularly powerful one makes it so that all black cards count as a single suit and all reds do as well. Naturally, this makes flushes much easier to come by, so you might prioritize increasing the value of flushes as you’re able.

Every third round is a “Boss Ante,” which features some gimmick that makes your life harder, such as forcing you to play a random card each hand, taking money with each card you play, or other nasty tricks. Fell the eighth boss, and you’ve won that run. You’re entitled to play on, though, with the knowledge that only truly exceptional builds will make it much farther. I like that system, though. It’s fun to see just how far you can go! My understanding is it’s not unheard of to create a particularly broken build that can exceed the integer overflow (at which point the game can no longer be continued). Pretty funny.

And that’s really all there is to the game! Somehow it’s a total thrill, though. Building something that makes your score go nuts every time you play a hand just feels great! It’s also naturally a great game for short bits of downtime, as you can quit anytime and return to the exact state you were in. Being a work-from-homer with a job with frequent downtime, it’s certainly been bad for me.

Anyway, no one needed me to recommend this game, but I’m doing it. Good stuff. 🃏