Balatro is one of the most played games of 2024, and is also one of the best games for anyone to get, especially if you’re not a super avid gamer. It is an indie game made by solo developer LocalThunk, and the game made $4.4 million in two months of its release.
The gameplay of Balatro revolves around poker hands. It is a roguelike game, meaning if you lose a level you will have to start from the beginning. Levels, or blinds, are grouped into 3 to make an ante. Each ante consists of a small, large, and boss blind. Each blind has a score you are trying to reach, small blinds are the easiest, large blinds are medium difficulty, and boss blinds have the highest score and have a special modifier that makes the blind harder.
The way you score is by playing poker hands, and you start the game with a normal poker deck, though you can earn special decks by getting farther or doing special actions during runs. Each poker hand gives a different score involving a chip score and mult score, and each card gives their value to the chip score. There are many different ways to increase the points you get from playing these hands, the main way is through joker cards. Joker cards give you bonuses that range from simple things such as always adding 4 to the multiplier, to more complex effects such as retriggering every played 2, 3, 4, and 5, meaning they add their score to the chips twice, and will reactivate any other corresponding jokers.
In each blind you will have a number of hands able to be played, and times you are able to discard cards from your hand, that is related to what deck you are playing, the first deck giving you 4 hands to play and 5 discard opportunities. After you beat a blind you will get $ tokens equal to what blind you are playing, how many hands you have left, and if the blind has any related modifiers. $ are used to buy jokers and other special card types that will improve your ability to score.
Overall, Balatro is an incredibly fun and simple game that does get more complex as you get better at it. But it will always stick to the core mechanic of playing poker hands. It’s on pretty much every platform and on average costs about $15-$20, so it’s pretty cheap compared to most games sold these days.