🎮🃏 How Balatro twists the familiar

I was in a bind. Well, a blind, technically. And to be even more specific, a boss blind. This one is called The Window.

None of the diamond cards in my 56-card deck were valid, having been debuffed on this level. Thankfully, I had a tarot card which would convert three of them to clubs, allowing me to make a Level 4 Flush and gain enough chips so I could buy a Joker that would apply a multiplier to my now-rebuffed diamonds.

Balatro is a video game that has its own language, rooted in the familiar but given several twists and tweaks until it becomes something only a cosmetic resemblance to something you know, with the game encouraging you to dig a little deeper, take on just one more run. And one more run, and one more run…

Mechanics

You know the familiar. 52 cards, split equally into 4 suits of 13. Just like real life, you only ever play against yourself, aiming to build enough chips up to get through eight levels (antes), with three stages (blinds) in each round. There’s a small blind, a big blind and a boss blind, where a modifier takes hold. In each round, you’ve got a set number of hands to play to achieve the target.

Scoring is via conventional poker means, with high cards and pairs initially and normally being the least rewarded and royal flushes being near the top, with the base number of chips having the card value added together, before a multiplier is applied. 

But here’s where it gets weird.

Balatro is a card game where everyone starts with a 52-card deck, but after each round, you accumulate money from which you can buy modifiers to your deck.

Think of the original 150 Pokemon, and how each one had different abilities? That’s the Jokers here. There are 150, arranged into different tiers of rarity and each having unique abilities. In most cases, you can have up to five active at any one time. Optimising these is the key to success. For example, you could have a Joker that retriggers your face cards, playing them twice. Next to that, a Joker that adds 50 chips to each face card you play, and one that offers an extra multiplier to hands that feature a pair.

Each round, you can buy and sell Jokers. But these are just one way you can affect change. What other cards are famous and familiar? Tarot cards. These offer different effects to individual cards. For example, Strength allows you to increase the value of two of your cards, turning your 10s into Jacks. Suddenly, you have six Jacks in your deck. Or there’s a tarot card that converts three of your cards into clubs. Suddenly, you have six Jacks, and four of those are the Jack of clubs. Try playing five of a kind in a real-life casino and they’ll take you outside for a comprehensive shoeing.

Oh, and one of those Jacks has a gold seal on it, meaning you get $3 when it’s played. But obviously there’s more to come.

Planet cards increase the rewards for each type of hand, meaning a pair could end up worth more than a full house, and Spectral cards are even more extreme versions of tarot (convert all eight cards in your hand into a random suit is one example.)

So you can see that this is more Pokemon than Poker. You stack your own deck according to your Jokers and aim for the moon with your score. Every run becomes different, and develops its own strategy as you go through the levels, only to be forgotten when the Jokers and other modifier cards available go in a different direction as you chase down the Boss Blinds.

These hands appear once every three levels, and range from different effects (all face cards are dealt face down, or you can only play one hand, or one type of hand etc) - these create a unique challenge. Often, it takes away a key part of your strategy forcing you to approach each hand in a different way.

Presentation

All of the above would be a challenging and fun game in itself, but how it’s presented also adds something to the game. 

Listen to the above and it’s a sort of drunken lava lamp of a soundtrack. I’ve seen it described as chillwave? But however you describe it, it adds to its charm. One thing I liked about games like Crypt of the Necrodancer is how the same beat would change depending on what you’re doing in the game. Balatro has that same tic, with card buying or boss blinds having different variations of the same theme.

In some ways, the soundtrack is always there, repetitive and you hear it without listening. So in a game based around playing cards, the music is the closest thing to the full casino experience.

If you don’t end up humming it, you may need to check you actually possess a soul (Soul is also a Spectral card with a fun effect).

There’s a heavy, but adjustable CRT filter applied to the game. I took this off immediately, but combined with the music and sound effects, it adds to the overall charm of the game. 

Morals

As part of the frustrating path to releasing the game, Balatro has an 18 rating because - according to the people who give age ratings - it “teaches - by way of images, information and gameplay - skills and knowledge that are used in poker.” I am certain that yes, based on this, I could walk into a casino and know the rules of poker, but the game is so removed from it mechanically that you can’t earn triple chips just because you have a Joker that says so.

The other part of this is - in the UK as an example - you cannot actually go anywhere on the internet without being bombarded with ads for “your favourite TV shows as slot games!” Because you don’t have enough Ant and Dec in your life, here’s Saturday Night Takeaway as a gambling game! (Twist: the takeaway is your furniture after the bailiffs move in).

One review of Balatro stated that “if Balatro were trying to get money out of you it would be pure evil, but happily, once you pay your £12.79, all the gambling is virtual and the only thing you’re spending is your time.” 

I agree with this. As a gambling simulator, it would be devastating. But all the money and chips in the game are virtual, and there is no option to unlock things for money. Instead, players can unlock everything at the touch of a button, if they so wish.

Balatro was made by one person. A Canadian who goes by the name of LocalThunk. He has had it written in his will that no gambling firm or casino can buy or license the game’s IP. Despite the money made from porting to consoles and now mobile, it would have been easy to reward yourself by cashing in on a deal and forgetting the implications of the decision while staring at the zeroes in your bank account, as the zeroes drain from others.

Success

Despite being initially pulled from sale, Balatro has come back to be one of the games of 2024. 

It has been nominated for three awards at the Golden Joystick awards - Best Indie Game, PC Game of the Year and Best Audio Design, with that soundtrack and the clicks and whistles each game takes you through being recognised.

But beyond positive reviews and award nominations against bigger, heavily-financed studios comes the true success. Video games are meant to be a representation of another life, a better, possible world where you’re only restricted by your imagination. And yet, some of the biggest-selling games have a number or a year next to them, on a tightly-controlled annual release schedule, and some of the game’s best rewards are locked beyond payment walls that become pointless when the next game comes out, with incremental features presented as revolution.

Balatro is an original idea couched in familiar visuals and language. It’s the definition of a cosy game, where the stakes are relatively low, and if you fail, well, you can pick it up for one more run. It doesn’t rely on real-life, like Call of Duty or EAFC. It doesn’t rely on science fiction, like almost every other game with a gun and a cryptic title. It’s a simple game full of nuance, taking something as soulless as playing poker against a computer and making it instantly, joyously fun. 

The other part of success is how you think about the game when you’re not thinking about it. You find yourself thinking about what jokers you could invent, like one that triples the multiplier for hearts, but destroys another random card in the process (call it heartbreak hotel or something). Being able to be part of your thinking when you’re not playing the game - that’s true success.

Give Balatro a few runs, you won’t want to play much else.