If my hours didn't make it obvious, Balatro is an absolute masterpiece, not just as a roguelike, but as a fun card game.

The idea is simple. You play Poker, with the goal being to reach a specified chip value by playing Poker hands - pair, two pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, straight, flush, full house, etc. These Poker hands add up the number of chips given by your played cards, and multiplies them based on a given Mult value. As you complete more rounds, the required chips increase, going into the thousands, and eventually even the millions. How do you manage to reach such high values with a standard deck of cards?

That's where the roguelike element of Balatro comes into play. Every time you complete a round, you are given a cash reward, then sent to a shop. Shops allow you to buy card packs that give you additional playing cards to add to your deck, Tarot cards that can apply buffs to cards or give you more money, and Planet cards that level up the power of a hand, which becomes a necessity as chip requirements become far too high for base value to reach alone.

Shops also contain the most valuable items in the game - Jokers. Jokers are essentially this game's equivalent to relics you would find in games like Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac, providing major buffs to several aspects of the game, and can substantially influence how each run plays out. There are Jokers that add chips or mult when you play certain card types, multiply your total Mult by a certain amount, duplicates cards, give cash, and more. There are 150 Jokers in the game to find, and all of them are capable with interacting with each other in ways that can send even the smallest hands into literal game-breaking numbers (no joke, it is proven possible for a single card to score a value so high that it breaks the game's score counter).

The catch? Unlike other roguelikes that allow you to stack your relic items almost infinitely, Balatro only allows you to hold up to 5 Jokers, meaning you have to be careful about what you use. Thankfully, the game also offers ways for these Jokers to be more powerful than they already are. Jokers can be given one of 4 different "editions" - Foiled, which gives +50 chips, Holographic, giving +10 Mult, Polychrome, multiplying total Mult by 1.5x, and the rarest modifier of all of them, Negative, which adds an additional slot to your Joker count, allowing you to slap on an additional Joker to your collection.

Balatro is extremely fun and addictive. Runs can be done at your own pace, as the game allows you to skip non-boss rounds, meaning you could complete a run in less than 10 minutes if you play your cards right (figuratively AND literally). Absolutely worth the asking price, both on Steam and on mobile devices.

If my hours didn't make it obvious, Balatro is an absolute masterpiece, not just as a roguelike, but as a fun card game. The idea is simple. You play Poker, with the goal being to reach a specified chip value by playing Poker hands - pair, two pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, straight, flush, full house, etc. These Poker hands add up the number of chips given by your played cards, and multiplies them based on a given Mult value. As you complete more rounds, the required chips increase, going into the thousands, and eventually even the millions. How do you manage to reach such high values with a standard deck of cards? That's where the roguelike element of Balatro comes into play. Every time you complete a round, you are given a cash reward, then sent to a shop. Shops allow you to buy card packs that give you additional playing cards to add to your deck, Tarot cards that can apply buffs to cards or give you more money, and Planet cards that level up the power of a hand, which becomes a necessity as chip requirements become far too high for base value to reach alone. Shops also contain the most valuable items in the game - Jokers. Jokers are essentially this game's equivalent to relics you would find in games like Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac, providing major buffs to several aspects of the game, and can substantially influence how each run plays out. There are Jokers that add chips or mult when you play certain card types, multiply your total Mult by a certain amount, duplicates cards, give cash, and more. There are 150 Jokers in the game to find, and all of them are capable with interacting with each other in ways that can send even the smallest hands into literal game-breaking numbers (no joke, it is proven possible for a single card to score a value so high that it breaks the game's score counter). The catch? Unlike other roguelikes that allow you to stack your relic items almost infinitely, Balatro only allows you to hold up to 5 Jokers, meaning you have to be careful about what you use. Thankfully, the game also offers ways for these Jokers to be more powerful than they already are. Jokers can be given one of 4 different "editions" - Foiled, which gives +50 chips, Holographic, giving +10 Mult, Polychrome, multiplying total Mult by 1.5x, and the rarest modifier of all of them, Negative, which adds an additional slot to your Joker count, allowing you to slap on an additional Joker to your collection. Balatro is extremely fun and addictive. Runs can be done at your own pace, as the game allows you to skip non-boss rounds, meaning you could complete a run in less than 10 minutes if you play your cards right (figuratively AND literally). Absolutely worth the asking price, both on Steam and on mobile devices.