Balatro Review: Addictive occult card game that'll have you begging for more

Balatro is an innocent enough game by every metric that quickly evolves into a fight between the devil (the game) and a dunce (you/me), but the way it ramps up into a beast that begs you to break the mechanics and create winning combinations, turns the gameplay loop into a gameplay Mobius strip that won't let you go.

The base gameplay of Balatro is simple enough. It's a scored 'version' of poker where each played hand from pairs and flushes earns 'credits' which are multiplied by the hand you played - so a straight flush would be worth more in terms of credits and a multiplier than playing a solitary 'high card'.

If you score beats the current blind, you move on to the next round. Each 'ante' has three blinds for players to navigate, 'small blind', a 'big blind' and a 'boss blind', beating the boss blind - a blind with special abilities that might negate entire suits of cards amongst other things 'ups the ante' and refreshes all the blinds with bigger scores and different abilities.

Winning rounds earns you money that you can use to buy new cards (including jokers that offer different effects to played hands and consumable tarot/planet cards that also offer their own effects and upgrades) and vouchers that offer passive boosts to runs, and booster packs that afford even more cards.

Then, you might hit a point where you win - or lose - and you're forced to start over with a new deck, but you do keep the cards you've unlocked so you might find them again in your next run.

And if you're worried that you don't know poker and in turn that Balatro would offer you nothing, don't sweat it. For me, someone who cannot remember the rules of the game of poker at all, there's still a delight. For someone who can barely think under pressure, and can't add up, there's still a lot of fun to be had with Balatro. Why? The game will make you feel powerful, and that you know everything. It gets out of hand quite quickly.

Some early hands will have you struggling to pick up 300 points. Then drawing the right jokers and planet cards that upgrade your hands and multipliers will see you scoring thousands of points without a thought. It's so effective, and all the effects are brilliantly stackable. With the right amount of luck, you could easily make a game breaking deck.

Balatro starts simpleBalatro

But for the most part, you're going to be planning and making that luck yourself. You might turn your club-suited cards into hearts because you've got a joker that adds bonuses to your hearts, but what happens then when you draw those - clubs and you cannot discard them? You'll always be questioning, researching and second-guessing your upgrades throughout every run.

This makes for a game that gets increasingly satisfying and clicky in all the right type of ways. You'll feel like a genius for deciding to play two Uranus cards pre-match that level up the effectiveness and point-scoring of your played two-pairs and the snowball effect of jokers and upgrading cards, or getting rid of all your face cards (kings, jacks, queens etc) because you've got a boost to anything that isn't them.

And then, when it ends, you'll ask yourself whether you did a good enough job of it all. Chances are, you did - that's just the luck of the draw.

The retro stylings of the game (complete with scan lines) lend itself to something played on a flickering CRT monitor - it almost seems wasted in current HD formats. The older the format you play it on, the better - or at least 'more authentic' your visual experience will be. I imagine a lot of fairly pricey Steam Deck consoles are currently running as Balatro machines. I imagine for a few of them, that's all they will ever be now.

There's an occult pull to the game that combines with very simple mechanics that have both been the bedrock of an entire gambling industry and folklore for eternity. Why does one of the joker's say 'prevents death' - surely we're just losing the game and starting again? There's something more to Balatro, the feel that it's do or die. That there's something else going on. Is the player character dying upon failure? Is it really all-or-nothing on the back of a played hand?

It's not, it's just a card game, and one of the best at that.

The verdict

Balatro is an extremely simple rogue-like game, and the addictive grip it has might never let you go. It's cheap, accessible and demands that you keep playing. There's no stopping the march of the cards, and Balatro will keep you asking for just 'one more turn'.

Score: 4/5

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