Balatro review: the poker roguelike that eats evenings
A deckbuilder about poker hands and absurd jokers that is far easier to start than to stop.
Balatro, made by the solo developer LocalThunk and published by Playstack on February 20, 2024, starts from something everyone knows: poker hands. A pair, a flush, a full house. Then it breaks every rule around them.
Chips times mult
Each hand scores chips multiplied by mult, and every round you need to beat a target before you run out of hands and discards. Jokers, bought between rounds, bend the maths: one adds mult for every heart played, another doubles a score if the hand has exactly three cards. Planet cards level up the hands you play most, tarot cards rewrite the deck itself.
The joy of the broken build
The magic is the moment a run turns. Five jokers that looked unrelated suddenly feed one another, the score counter starts spinning into scientific notation, and the boss blind that looked impossible melts. Then the next run starts from nothing, and you chase it again.
Easy in, hard out
There are no reflexes to learn and nothing to read but the cards. That is why Balatro spread far beyond the usual roguelike audience, and why its mobile version, released in September 2024, fits it so well.
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