Our Verdict
While it might take a little while for Balatro to reveal its true glory, once it does, few deck-building roguelikes can compete with its gratifying gameplay loop. With creative mechanics, charming visuals, and a wealth of content to keep you coming back for more, this is truly an indie hit for the ages.
You know a game is good when you can’t put it down. When you find yourself thinking of it when you’re walking the dog, taking the bins out, or working – don’t tell my editor. For most of the last year, that has been my experience with Balatro. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve reluctantly put down my Steam Deck, already planning the next evening’s run.
At first glance, Balatro might look like a poker game. Well, it’s not. You use the same hands as you would in a game of Texas Hold ‘em to score points, sure, but that’s the only truly noteworthy comparison. LocalThunk’s smash hit indie is really a roguelike deck builder, but there’s no battling, it’s all about using poker hands to build your score and meet the threshold in individual blinds, the game’s term for rounds.
For example, you need 300 points to get through the first blind, which you can achieve with a combination of lower-scoring hands, such as a two-pair or three-of-a-kind, or a single high-scoring hand, like a full house or flush. It all depends on your luck of the draw and the additional points you get for the cards you use, as each card you play adds its numerical value to the chip count.
In each blind, you get a few hands to reach the score, and a few discards to try and comb your deck to find the cards you need to build a decent hand. It’s a pretty simple premise, which is part of the incredible design of Balatro because as soon as you’ve got to grips with the basics, a world of incredible combinations and game-breaking scores opens up, inviting you to chase high scores like a raging bull chases a Matador dangling red cloth. Nothing else matters, only the score.
Of course, you’re going to need more than just a few flushes and straights to earn the higher scores that the game starts to demand after a few runs, and that’s where joker cards come into play. In most runs, you can use up to five joker cards to enhance your score after buying them from the in-game shop, adding to the chip count or the mult. Some jokers are pretty simple, such as Banner, which adds 30 chips to the score for each remaining discard, or Fibonacci, adding +8 to the multiplier for every Ace, 2, 3, 5, or 8 in a scored hand. However, some ask a little more of you or limit your options while boosting a specific sort of hand or suit. It’s all about finding what works with – forgive me for this one – the hand you’re dealt.
Outside of jokers, you can purchase planet cards, which increase the value of a certain hand for the rest of the run, and tarot cards. Tarot cards are a bit more complicated, but they essentially give you the ability to edit your deck by enhancing or removing specific cards. At first, it’s all a bit perplexing, but before long you realize that with some luck, you can use tarot cards to fill your deck with Queens, or, if you’ve got that Fibonacci in your joker line-up, you might opt to turn as many of your cards into Aces as possible to get the multiplier boost over and over again. There’s a real creative element to Balatro, and fortunately, it doesn’t ask you to do the maths yourself, giving you a preview of your potential score before you hit the button and put down a hand.
If joker, planet, and tarot cards aren’t enough – and sometimes, they aren’t – the shop also offers vouchers, which vary from granting you an extra hand or discard to lowering the price of other cards. This is where you need to start thinking about budgeting, as you only get a few dollars for completing most rounds, and if you spend all your money in one go, there’s a chance you could miss out on something ideal for your run in the next post-round shop.
Still, the game’s most challenging aspect arrives in the form of Boss Blinds, which occur every three blinds at the end of what the game calls an ante. Each Boss Blind comes with a caveat, which varies from not scoring a specific card type to limiting you to no discards. This is where a majority of your runs will fall apart, and though it feels occasionally unfair, you get to see the Boss Blind two blinds before it pops up, so you can at least try and prepare yourself.
Sure, it feels awful if you’ve developed a deck that’s all about playing Hearts, and then the game tells you you can’t play Hearts, but a new run is always just a button press away, and there are a few ways to mitigate the game-ending nature of Boss Blinds if you’re smart about it, including a specific voucher and a few jokers. Yes, jokers can also change the mechanics of the metagame, not just your hands, and in some instances, give you more money for completing rounds, so building your line-up of five takes a lot of consideration when balancing everything at play.
There’s just something magical about Balatro’s gameplay loop that’s hard to put into words, which isn’t ideal when I’m trying to write a review. Much like fellow indie big-hitter Stardew Valley and Vampire Survivors, it feels almost impossible to put down, with each run giving you new ideas for the next one in a gaming feedback loop that never gets old. It’s also a bit like Hades in that losing a run doesn’t make you want to put the game down, it makes you want to better your last effort so you can uncover more of the game’s secrets, and that’s a pivotal factor in what makes a roguelike truly great.
The sense of achievement you get from finally beating a run – making it past ante eight and a final extra-challenging Big Blind – is incredible, but also, sort of fleeting, as you realize soon after that’s just the beginning of what Balatro has in store. After your first success, you get a new deck, and there’s a collection of decks to unlock, each with its own theme. My personal favorite is the Magic Deck, which gives you two copies of The Fool, a tarot card that allows you to copy the ability of the last played tarot or planet card, at the start of a run, but you might find that something else suits the playstyle you develop.
Not only does beating the game once introduce you to a new deck, but it also unlocks Stakes. Stakes are essentially difficulty settings, and if you thought beating Balatro just once was grueling, wait until the game demands higher scores to muster every round while removing one of your discards. There’s no room for mistakes here, and if you’re a completionist, there’s a wealth of content to dig your teeth into and test your creativity by delving into the endless joker, planet, and tarot combinations.
The best endorsement I can give of Balatro is that I started playing it this time last year, and after over 100 hours of gameplay, I’m still finding new ways to approach scoring and fresh joker combinations. I’ve also got two save files, now that Balatro also belongs to the massive library of Apple Arcade games, so no matter where I might find myself, I can always pass the time by upping the stakes and putting myself through the wringer to try and clear a run just for that sweet sense of satisfaction. It usually lasts a few seconds, and then, as if I have no control over my extremities, I’ve hit ‘new run’ and I’m back in the game.
Outside of the gameplay loop that has kept me up later than I’d like on more occasions than I’d prefer to mention, the art of Balatro is also incredibly charming. The joker, tarot, and planet cards all have distinct visual aesthetics, as do the various decks, and it’s a treat for the eyes as much as it is for the gamer brain. There’s also a CRT filter over everything, which you can adjust in the settings, that offers a sort of dream-like quality to the overall experience and pushes the nostalgia buttons of those of us old enough to remember playing games on CRT monitors.
Ultimately, Balatro is well worth its place in the pantheon of indie greats. It might take a little while to reveal its full potential, but once you get it, you get it, and the thought of another run is enough to tear you away from almost anything. As I type this, I’m already thinking about what I’m going to do next time, how I’m going to beat my high score, and the jokers I want to combine to try and break the game. If that isn’t a sign of excellence, I don’t know what is.
There you have it, our Balatro review. If you’re looking for more deck-building delights while you’re here, be sure to check out our guide to the best mobile card games, as well as our Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection review. Or, if you’re looking for more options to add to your back catalog, see our lists of the best Switch games and the best Steam Deck games.