Balatro is the video game equivalent of crack. Every aspect of this game makes it hard to put down. It’s easy to spin it up for “one quick round” and look at the clock to realize that hours have passed. Balatro is a roguelite deck-builder that is about playing poker hands to score points, as well as using a variety of modifiers to multiply those points. There’s a wonderful level of random chance that influences every run that influences the player to experiment with all sorts of different builds. Even after spending dozens of hours playing poker hands, I still feel the draw of Balatro to see what kind of strategy I can cook up.

The structure of the game is that you play poker hands to try to accumulate points and surpass a threshold to complete a round. Typically, you get 4 hands to play per round and 3 discards to try to put together higher scoring hands. After each round, you visit the shop to spend money earned on modifying cards to increase your points. The cornerstone of these modifications are the joker cards. You can hold 5 joker cards that vary wildly in the bonuses that they provide. From simple bonuses like multiplying your hand’s score or giving you extra discards, to more specific bonuses like increasing the base chips and multiplication of Aces or Fibonacci numbers. 

There are so many jokers to stumble on and it is incredibly engaging to try to find the synergies between them. My highest scoring run consisted of a multiplicative joker that increased its multiplier every time a card was added to the deck along with another joker that added a card at the start of every round. This was further enhanced by two of my other jokers that copied the effects of other jokers, leading to a rapidly climbing multiplier. Aside from jokers, there are also planet cards that permanently increase the base point value of certain poker hands. There’re tarot cards that provide a variety of effects from buffing individual cards to giving you more money.

All these options provide a fantastic system for decision making. Every time you visit the shop after a round you have to weigh what bonuses you want and whether or not you want to gamble on booster packs and hope there is something good inside. You want to have a healthy amount of money to earn interest and allow for big purchases later. There’re so many factors at play that you have to consider. Sometimes you have to make short-term purchases just to get you through the next few rounds while hoping you stumble upon better options. The randomness isn’t frustrating, it’s what makes the game so compelling. Every time you get a run going, it feels powerful. Being forced to experiment with whatever the game throws at you leads to incredible moments.

Each run is structured into 8 “antes”, each ante having 3 rounds of increasing point requirements, the last of which being a “boss” with special effects. After completing the 8th ante, there’s an option to continue with your deck in endless mode. Initially, I found myself always going into endless mode to see how far I could take my deck. I discovered that the score requirements quickly begin to scale exponentially, leading to most of my runs sputtering out around ante 11 or 12, no matter how good they were. At first, I was frustrated by this, but I soon realized it is a blessing that the endless mode scales exponentially. At some point, your build is essentially complete so you are just going through the motions every round. Most of the fun decision making happens much earlier in the run, so dragging out the endless mode wouldn’t be enjoyable. And having a concrete goal of completing the 8th ante means you can take short-term risks and attempt non-optimal builds as you don’t need to scale exponentially to win.

The one problem that I have with the gameplay of Balatro is that the early rounds are fairly boring and repetitive. You need to save up money before you can buy anything, so you are often stuck playing high-value hands like flushes and straights to clear the first few rounds. You are at the mercy of the shop to have some decent jokers to get you through ante 2. You don’t have the money to reroll or gamble on booster packs unless you are truly desperate. It’s hard to alleviate this issue without the developer placing a finger on the scale and tipping the odds in the player’s favor early on. My suggestion would be to have the cost of rerolls scale by ante. That way players can actually afford to reroll the shop a few times early on to fish for usable jokers while simultaneously increasing the difficulty in later antes.

The issue with the early game is only made worse as you turn up the difficulty. There are eight difficulties and over a dozen decks to choose from. I mostly enjoy how the difficulties were designed as they rarely equate to “score more points”. Many of the difficulties add modifications to jokers that make them unsellable, or cost money every turn, or expire after 5 rounds. This adds an additional layer of decision making on which jokers you want to purchase. The problem is that on the highest difficulties you really need everything to go right early on to have a successful run. I don’t think it’s the end of the world because it is still a ton of fun to try to scrape by with suboptimal choices, but I do wish there was something to make the first couple antes more engaging.

Part of what makes Balatro so addicting is its presentation. The game looks great, even on mobile platforms. I love looking at the distinctive design of all the jokers. But the animations and sound effects are really what makes Balatro tick. Watching the game emphasize every card and joker as the score climbs up is addicting. Your deck becomes a Rube Goldberg machine of multiplying bonuses that is fun just to watch unfold. The game cleverly doesn’t tell the player the final point value of the hand they are about to play, leaving the player to watch and wait with bated breath as the score rapidly grows. I particularly love that when a single hand surpasses the total point value necessary for a given round, the score display lights on fire. It’s a really satisfying touch.

It’s hard to explain why Balatro is so addicting, but beware how difficult it is to break free from the grasp of Balatro. The pure variety and allure of creating an overpowered deck fires all the right synapses in my brain. The dopamine of watching the score skyrocket is addicting. There’s so many different decks, difficulties, and challenges that force you to play with all the different options available. It is for these reasons that I give Balatro a 9/10. I would say it’s the perfect game to play a quick run when you have time to spare, but it’s so fun that I’d have a hard time putting it down after a single run.