What is Balatro?
Balatro is an indie rogue-like deck building card game based on the game of Poker. It was released on February 20, 2024 and is available on Microsoft Windows, Xbox One & Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PS4 & PS5 and costs $15. I played it on my Windows through my Steam Deck. The game varies in length as it can technically be beaten on any given run but each run lasts between 20-45 minutes.
Game Review:
Balatro is a game that I wasn’t initially interested in but because my family was in the process of moving this summer, I was looking for a small handheld game that I could play in the evenings or moments when we weren’t busy with moving. Balatro filled that niche so I picked it up and gave it a shot because I had heard glowing reviews of it.
The goal of the game is to score enough points to surpass the Blind, which acts as a level, using poker hands to score points. Different poker hands are worth more than others, for example a Full House is worth significantly more than a Pair. These hands can be upgraded throughout a run so that certain hands score more than they did at the beginning of the run. As someone who doesn’t play poker and isn’t familiar with most of the hands, this game helped me learn the hands and now I think I could recognize them better in the odd chance that I do play poker.
There are also other ways of scoring points. You can apply up to 5 joker cards to your run that give all kinds of buffs. Some are passive buffs that always apply regardless of the hand you play, some require you to meet criteria to get the buff that the joker offers. Some jokers can be used very synergistically with other jokers or poker hands to have huge multipliers and rack up the point totals. It provides a very satisfying score multiplier mechanic that can be strategically approached to tickle that nerve that makes you feel like a smart player.
Balatro does throw some challenges at you to make it harder for you to reach these point requirements for the Blinds. You have a limited number of hands and discards to successfully surpass a Blind. If you fail to get the required points, it’s game over and you restart your run. Another challenge is the Boss Blinds. These happen every 3 levels where a bigger point total with some added challenge will be introduced. For example one Boss Blind will make all club cards worth no points, so if you had a strategy built around getting lots of flushes with club cards, you would be in trouble. So you really have to have a strong strategy with a few strong backup plans in case the Boss Blind throws something at you that counters you.
Balatro also utilizes an in-game currency that you can use between Blinds to upgrade cards, jokers, hands, or to buy items to use. All of this is in-game and doesn’t cost real money. For a game based on gambling, Balatro is very gamer friendly by not forcing you to spend more money. For those of you who saw poker and got turned off, don’t worry about predatory gambling mechanics.
This review is going to be fairly short because that’s really what the game is. There isn’t a story and the nature of rogue-likes means it’s fairly repetitive. That’s not to say that it gets stale and boring. The sheer number of jokers and the diversity of their abilities makes every run feel slightly different and gives you many different strategies to try to make it through to the end. I have only successfully beaten all of the blinds once and it was an awesome strategy that utilized flushes and straights of the same suits. It’s a hard but engaging and fair game.
Family Friendliness:
Balatro is family friendly in my opinion despite it being based on poker. This is because it forgoes the gambling mechanics inherent to poker and gets at the fun of different hands and playing statistical chances without the stakes of real world money because there are no betting mechanics. There isn’t any inappropriate language or imagery. It’s just a card game with some artistic additions to the cards.
Features for Parents:
Balatro also is very friendly to parents and anyone who needs to be able to pick-up/drop-off really quickly. You can save your spot in a run and come back whenever you need, which is not a common feature in the genre. It also has an interesting passcode feature where you can save a passcode and come back to any game with its exact context and settings by inputting the passcode, even if you’ve started new runs since. It’s really a game made to be able to be played whenever, which made it great for a moving game.
Final Verdict:
Balatro is a fun and engaging card game. It is inspired by poker and uses the hands while forgoing the gambling inherent to it. It uses complex score multiplier mechanics that are still approachable and engaging to use. It challenges a player to be strategic and commit to a style for each run, but is really flexible about starting runs and picking up where you left off. It’s a low-commitment game that can suck you in for an hour or two at a time and have you enjoying it the whole time. I’d for sure recommend this for anyone looking for the indie gems of 2024.
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