alostvagabond

Balatro

Balatro

Originally under the working title "Joker Poker", "Balatro" is a roguelike deck-building game with a poker twist. The basic goal is to get as many chips as possible in order to beat the blind. Each poker hand has a score and multiplier associated with it, with "High Card" being the lowest score, and a "Royal Flush" being the highest. There are also three secret hands that can only be achieved by adding/modifying cards in your deck.

You are rewarded some money after each round depending on the stakes and how many poker hands you have remaining. With your money, you can buy planet cards, which level up your poker hands making them worth more chips and having a higher multiplier. Tarot cards have a wide variety of effects that can do things from changing a card's suit, transforming it into another card, or even removing it from your deck. You can also buy regular playing cards, and some other secret cards are available that have extremely powerful effects.

The big gimmick of the game are the joker cards that all have unique effects. Some jokers will grant you a chip bonus for playing a certain card or hand, while others will add to your multiplier. There are a few jokers that will also multiply your score as well which can lead you to score ridiculously high scoring hands.

Balatro is a game that encourages you to break it. The game actively wants you to score as high as possible and play for as long as you can. There's a seed system that allows you to share your run with others to see if someone else can beat your score, or break the game further. Overall, Balatro is a very addicting and simple game that you can spend hundreds of hours in if you're not careful.

Buy the game on Steam!