Balatro
Developed by LocalThunk
Published by Playstack
Played on Nintendo Switch
The Skinny: The House always wins. But let’s do another run, just to be sure.
Balatro is a deck-building rogue-like based around poker. But rather than present you with a simulation of opponents, the presentation is simplified down to core elements. The player presented with a hand of cards floating in a void, and are challenged to beat an escalating series of score challenges. But while Balatro uses the structure and hands of a poker deck, it feels a lot more like Fluxx.
While you are building poker hands to survive each round, the real goal of the game is to change the rules to suit your strategy. Between rounds, players go to a Scorched Earth-style shop screen, where they are offered a rotating selection of different options to change the rules and contents of their deck. Planet cards make poker hands more valuable, while Tarot and Celestial cards have a number of different wild effects. You can also add new cards with special abilities such as giving players bonus money or points. But the most important cards for sale are the Jokers. Jokers sit outside of the player’s deck and add different ongoing rules. They might buff the scores of certain suits or change the rules to allow players to skip cards when making straights, for example. There are over a hundred Jokers, and players unlock new ones by completing hidden objectives in each run.
Optimization is the core of the gameplay, by removing the opponent and focusing on making the best hand possible with the best rules possible, Balatro takes the core gameplay of deck-builders like Slay the Spire and distills them down to a potent core loop. By removing the action and exploration elements from games like Hades, the challenge changes from reaching a goal to making the numbers go up. And the thrill of watching those numbers rise as you struggle to stay ahead of the challenge curve is the beating heart of the game. The house might always win, but watching a successful combo turn a lowly pair into an unstoppable juggernaut is a pure hit of dopamine.
Balatro’s simple, pixel-based aesthetic reinforces the focused premise. You aren’t sitting at a perfectly recreated poker table with 4K graphics to discern between every fiber of the felt surface. There aren’t any lovingly modeled clay chips that clink realistically as you bet. The cards are all pixel graphics, floating in a multicolor void that looks like an old MP3 player visualizer. There’s even a faux-CRT line grid over the whole thing, selling the simplicity of the game. The music and sound effects get the job done and are agreeable enough, though the game almost expects you to play with a podcast or audiobook in your ear. I played on the Nintendo Switch, and while the handheld version had some disability accommodations, such as high-contrast card mode, it doesn’t quite go far enough, and after even a short session, I felt a bit of eye strain. The text in the game is quite small, and there isn’t an option to enlarge it or change the font, making it difficult to read at times. This is so far a minor nitpick in an otherwise engaging and engrossing pick up and play game.
Balatro is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Playstation consoles. It’s a tasty little gem, that might eat up more of your time than you expect. But what’s the harm in just one more run?
Hugh J. O'Donnell 