4.7 KiB
| title | date | score | game_release_year | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_developer | game_genre | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balatro: Going Rogue With Poker | 2024-03-10 | 4 | 2024 | 132112 | 5.3 | Balatro | LocalThunk Inc. | card/boardgame |
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I violated my no roguelike buying rule yet again, only this time, I didn't end up being disappointed, as I received exactly what I expected: a heavy luck-driven poker-based game with huge spikes (and downfalls) in game runs. Everyone knows poker, and everyone knows sometimes that queen needed to turn your disarray of junk into a beautiful straight flush just doesn't show up. Balatro even ups the luck ante by throwing in crazy jokers and other bonuses, and even that didn't bother me. Welcome to the green table!
There's little need to explain how Balatro works: if you're familiar with the classic order (two pairs, a full house, flush, ...) you'll know what to expect. Each run, you're trying to make it through eight antes consisting out of a couple of small and big blinds, meaning you'll have to beat the house's pre-set chip amount which gradually gets higher. Earning chips is a matter of playing a poker hand. Each hand's chips worth is calculated by multiplying all card's worth (blue) by a total "mult" modifier (red), giving you two approaches to up the numbers.
These blue and red modifiers can be further tinkered with by buying jokers, tarot cards, celestial packs, and the like in the shop. A joker might give a x2 mult bonus when playing a three of a kind. Another one might add +100 for each face card slapped on the table. Needless to say, the crux of the matter lies in synergistic combinations: celestial packs boost your base poker mult levels, and adding the right joker cards that also boost your straight only increases those numbers.
An effective example I once came across with: there's a joker that allows you to create flushes and straights with only four instead of five cards. That one combined with various flush/straight boosts was very effective as it drastically increases your chances of forming the right poker hand. Another joker called Ride the Bus (see last screenshot) gives +1 mult per consecutive hand played without a face card. That one combined with pair(s)/three of a kind boosts suddenly makes those lowly fours less interesting discard fodder, especially if you manage to buy the Bus card in one of your first rounds!
And then there are tarot cards that add permanent modifiers to a few cards in your deck (glass cards that increase mult but have a chance to break, golden stamps that help earning money to spend in the shop, suit conversions, ... You name it, they've got it). As expected with roguelike games, the more you play, the more you'll unlock chances of certain weird/rare jokers appearing in your future runs. Like in Magic: the Gathering, there are four rarity forms of the 150 jokers in Balatro: common (70% chance of appearing in the shop), uncommon (25%), rare (5%), and legendary (only by using other triggers).
And then there are deck colors with modifiers to your hand size/discards/money flow/... Balatro throws so many randomizers at you that each run is bound to be truly unique. And that does bring us to the biggest disadvantage of the game: yup, you've guessed it: too much randomness. Again, I don't think that's very bad: it's one of the innate properties of a poker game, only cranked up to 100. Runs are played in less than 10 minutes, and it's the ideal pick up and play game after a tired working day, making the Switch in handheld mode the ideal host---except I do have trouble reading the small text font.
And that's exactly what makes Balatro great. It's poker. You don't expect too much. It's poker. You know randomness will be a big part of it. It's poker. Playing it is short and sweet, more a lovely distraction from the huge slogs called jRPGs than anything else, yet a full-blown video game in its own right, especially considering the sudden appearance of yet another indie developer out of nowhere. In that sense, feels like 2023's Pizza Tower, made by a small dedicated team. What holds it back from being amazing is the repetitive music I quickly turned off and the long-term replayability as I know I'll eventually get bored of it.
Give Balatro a try, it's likely to be one of the surprise indie hits of the year---and we're just shy of closing Q1 2024!
