Balatro is a game that I had seen people talking about for a while in random articles or Bluesky posts but didn’t pay any attention to. I knew it had something to do with poker, and as someone who has never been interested in poker that was immediately something of a turnoff for me. A couple of months ago, though, I had some time off from work and was looking for something new to play on my iPad after getting a little burned out on Retro Bowl, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, and Vampire Survivors. Balatro had won the Apple Arcade Game of the Year for 2024, and since I’m an Apple One subscriber I can play any Arcade game without any additional cost… so I figured I may as well finally give it a shot. I had no idea what I was getting into.
The basic premise of Balatro is that you score points by making poker hands… and the similarities to poker basically end there. Each poker hand you can play has two aspects to it: chips and multipliers. At a basic level, for example, playing Two Pair has a base of 20 chips and a 2 for the multiplier. Each card played as part of the hand counts toward this scoring, so if I played two 9’s and two 5’s for my Two Pair, the scoring would look like:
(20 + 9 + 9 + 5 + 5) x 2 = 96
On top of this basic scoring mechanism are tons of roguelike elements that give the game an insane amount of replayability and make it unbelievably addictive. The crux of these are various Jokers that you can buy between antes that offer innumerable perks. A simple Joker may give you a +8 multiplier when playing Two Pair, for example. That would alter the scoring above to:
(20 + 9 + 9 + 5 + 5) x (2 + 8) = 480
You can generally have up to 5 Jokers at a time (there are various ways around this to get more), and how you combine those Jokers is the key to having successful runs. The order of your Jokers is also extremely important, as some Jokers may take whatever you multiplier is and multiply that by some value. It’s important to have those Jokers last in line so they execute after any Jokers that would increase you multiplier.
Jokers can also have some additional attributes on top of their base functionality. Foil Jokers, for example generally have one of the following perks that apply on top of whatever that Joker’s normal function is:
- Additional multiplier.
- Additional chips.
- Multiplier multiplier.
A Joker that normally gives +8 multiplier when playing Two Pair will obviously only impact the multiplier when playing that particular type of hand. If it’s a Foil that also gives +10 multiplier, though, that +10 multiplier kicks on regardless of the hand being played, making them extremely powerful. And the affects stack, meaning that playing Two Pair will give an overall +18 multiplier. Other Jokers can be Negative, meaning that they don’t count toward your Joker limit, allowing you to exceed whatever should be the maximum number of Jokers you can have.
The playing cards themselves can also have various perks. In the screenshot above, for example, I have two special cards in my hand. The 4 of Clubs has a +4 multiplier on it that happens whenever it’s scored. The 3 of Diamonds is a Steel Card. If it’s in my hand, it’ll apply a x1.5 multiplier after scoring is done but before the Jokers execute.
Balatro is broken down into 8 antes, each with 3 blinds. The blinds are Big, Small, and Boss. As the names imply, the Small blind requires you to hit a smaller number of chips to pass it while the Big blind requires more chips. The Boss blind will have various boss challenges applied that you have to contend with. Some are simple, such all Diamonds are debuffed, meaning you can play them but they won’t count toward you scoring in the hand. Other Boss challenges may stipulate that you can only play a single type of hand for the ante. As you move through each blind and eventually each ante, the score you need to achieve to keep progressing scales upward. For each blind you have a given number of hands you can play and a given number of discards. If you run out of hands without hitting the score stipulated by the blind, your run is over. Should you manage to win the run by completing the Boss blind in the 8th ante, you get the option to either quit out or to enter endless mode to see how long you can go.
Between blinds, you get access to the shop. The blinds themselves give you a base amount of money for completing them, and there are various mechanisms for getting more money beyond that (e.g. leftover hands pay out, you earn interest on money you have, Jokers can give you money, etc.) The shop allows you to purchase Jokers and various other types of cards:
- Planet cards: These allow you to increase the level of your poker hands. Increasing the level of a hand generally means that the base chips and multiplier both go up.
- Tarot cards: These offer a variety of options, from adding multipliers to your cards, making them wild, doubling your money, giving you the sell value of your Jokers, and more.
- Playing cards: These just add base playing cards to you deck.
Most cards come from Booster Packs, which give you various cards and you get to choose 1 or 2 of them. Sometimes, however, you can also just directly buy cards from the shop.
To add even more randomness to the mix, there are two main things you pick when starting a new run: the deck and the difficulty. These need to be unlocked as you go, adding some nice goals to work toward. Decks have various changes to the base game. Some are simple, such as giving you an extra hand but one less discard. Others completely change how you might play by having double of each Heart and Spade while containing no Diamonds or Clubs. For a deck like that, you may go into it with a goal of building your run around playing a Flush since you know it’ll be easier to put together with only two suits.
The difficulties stack on top of each other to progressively make the game harder. The first level, for example, just makes it so that the number of chips needed to pass each blind scales up at a faster rate. The next one keeps that but also says that the Small blind has no base payout, meaning you’re contending with less money. Later difficulties (which I haven’t yet unlocked) start to do things like give Jokers extra properties like being Eternal (can’t be sold or destroyed.)
For me, Balatro was the definition of the phrase “better late than never.” It’s a terrific game that I’ve been playing regularly for months whenever I have a little bit of time to kill. It’s easy to pick up and play, though if I leave a run and come back to it later, it may take me a minute to re-familiarize myself with what Jokers I have and what my strategy for that run was as a result. The nice part about playing on the Apple Arcade, though, is that my game syncs between my phone and my iPad. While I normally play from my iPad at home, sometimes when I’m out at a brewery I’ll pop into a game on my phone. When that happens, it’s awesome to have all of the same Jokers, decks, and difficulties unlocked.