I didn’t go looking for a new game. Balatro found me. It was supposed to be five minutes on my Steam Deck. Now I leave the thing at home on purpose, like hiding a flask from myself.
Let’s be clear. I don’t like most card games. Poker at home? I usually go all-in early out of boredom. Lose. Watch the rest of the game from a chair. That’s my history with cards. So I didn’t expect Balatro to land. But here we are.
What Are You Even Doing in Balatro?
You start with nine regular playing cards. Like your average poker hand. You pick your best combo pair, trips, full house, flush. Then the machine scores you. You pass a points target, get a new hand, and do it again.
There are no opponents. The goal is to keep beating the score threshold round after round. That’s it at first.
But after a few rounds, things start bending.
You collect odd cards between hands. A steel card might double points. A holographic one stacks bonuses. You get planet cards that boost certain hands. Tarot cards that transform. Jokers with random effects. The more you play, the weirder your deck gets.
The hands themselves don’t change. Still poker. But everything around it starts mutating.
Your Nine Cards Get Real Weird, Real Fast
By round four or five, your deck looks like it was built in a fever dream.
You’re junking aces to chase a shiny three of hearts that gives double points. Maybe your deck rewards playing kings. Maybe two-pairs are now worth 40x because of a planet card. Stuff that would never work in real poker becomes mandatory.
And then there are bosses. These hit every few rounds. They throw in quirks like card limits, suit bans, or hidden hands. They force you to adapt or die. Sometimes it feels random. Sometimes you can work around them. All of it feels tight.
Lose a few rounds, and it stings. But the game resets everything. Each run starts fresh.
Cards, Clicks, and the Blur Between
Once I’d sunk a few hours into Balatro, I started thinking about other card-based time sinks. Solitaire on Windows 95. Hearthstone in the background during dull meetings. And of course, online poker. Games like Balatro twist poker mechanics into something new, but the core hand rankings and tension feel familiar.
What’s different is the lean. In online poker, you’re up against real opponents. Bluffing feels riskier. Stakes matter. In Balatro, the opponent is the points target. The game still draws from the same well. Gets its ideas from kings, flushes, and busted straights.
Strategy You Didn’t Know You’d Care About
You don’t build a deck the way you build one in other card games. You don’t lay out a plan. You just go. You work with the shops, random pulls, and effects. You start praying to hit a very specific Joker that pairs with your full house build.
At some point you’re throwing away the usual “strong hands” in poker. You’ll pass on a flush because your current bonuses reward low cards. You’ll give up a straight because your multipliers are tied to three-of-a-kinds.
Sometimes this backfires, big time.
A Few Hands Away, Then You Wreck It
I’ve almost hit the end twice. Round eight is where you technically win the run. I’ve choked both times.
Once, I gambled on a nine-high straight flush. I forgot I never upgraded it. I scored less than I would’ve with a sad pair of twos. Another time I threw away a scoring hand chasing long odds. Lost the draw. Lost the run.
Worst blowout? Final boss only let me play flushes. My whole deck was built around two-pair. Hard reset. Nothing I could do. The whole run crumbled in two hands.
There’s strategy, but there’s tilt in there too.
The Shop Breaks You and Makes You
Between hands, you earn money. That’s what you spend in the shop on new Jokers and cards. This part? It runs the show. You either get great synergy or you keep rerolling, hoping something comes out.
Some shops offer cards that would change your deck completely. Others just mock you with dead picks. You have cash, but the shop has all the power.
Every run hinges on this dumb little store.
There’s No Time. There’s Only Balatro
The art is pixel-style. Music’s woozy and slow. Jokers grin in a way that’s hard to look at for too long. Scan lines across the screen like an old TV. It’s all tuned to keep you sitting there.
I look up and I’m 90 minutes in.
The game costs a bit up front. After that, it doesn’t ask for more money. No tricks. No shops that charge real cash. It’s easy to fall in, because you never feel the game pushing you to spend—just to keep playing.
It’s Not Random, But It Can Feel That Way
There’s luck. Of course.
But you choose what you buy. You decide which hands to chase. You pick when to hold or dump a hand. So it’s not purely random. It’s constant weighing. Skill or luck? It blurs.
I got crushed a few times on gambles that didn’t land. Then I had a clean run and built a monster deck. Same game. Two wildly different endings.
You feel like you almost have control. You feel like next run, you’ll crush it.
No Apologies, I’m Stuck
I haven’t won yet. But I’m not mad.
I bring the Steam Deck to bed, then stash it in a drawer so I can sleep. Doesn’t work. I keep thinking about Jokers I passed on or dumb cards I trashed. I’m thinking in hearts and spades.
Eventually the spell will break. Maybe after the first win. But right now, I’m in.
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