Balatro News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

If you somehow haven’t fallen down the Balatro hole just yet, that slope is about to get a whole lot slippier. The mesmerising roguelike spin on poker is easy enough to lose an entire afternoon to by itself, but now it’s been combined with the granddaddy of all computer-related procrastination: classic Windows Solitaire.

Getting through Balatro is easier said than done. A solid understanding of Poker will only get you so far, and if we are being honest, it won’t get you all that far. The trick is to overcome each blind by scoring enough chips. The amount of chips required increases for each Ante, and every Ante has three Blinds.

Jokers are the beating heart of Balatro. Whilst there are many ways to gain power in Balatro, the most direct is to simply buy an assortment of powerful Jokers that synergise in some way. Heck, just having access to high-quality Mult cards can be enough, and that’s where Balatro’s legendary banana enters the conversation.

Playing every round in Balatro to earn the required cash to enhance your deck is the most obvious way to beat the game. At least, that’s would one would assume. In reality, the path to victory can take an assortment of mysterious turns, and skipping Blinds is sometimes the correct choice.

Balatro has well over 100 Jokers to find, unlock, and collect. Each Joker is a unique blend of mechanics and interactions that help mould your run into something truly unique every time you boot the game. Whilst rarity doesn’t necessarily translate to power directly, rarer Jokers do tend to have more complex mechanics.

Live for a few years now, the PS Stars program allows players to accrue points by purchasing and playing games, later exchanging those points for digital goods and, sometimes, full titles. If you regularly use your PlayStation consoles, there’s no reason not to sign up for the free program. Some impressive new rewards were just unveiled, and while they may be pricey, having the option to exchange points instead of cash is always welcome.

Progressing through the Antes in Balatro requires you to upgrade your deck. This can be through the addition, alteration of cards, or the powering up of specific hands. One of the best ways is to purchase Jokers – powerful cards that can bestow a wide range of modifiers. 

Getting through a run of Balatro is no easy feat. The game rapidly scales in difficulty, and if you aren’t prepared, prepare to be mocked. If you want to emerge victorious, you will need to muster every advantage, whether that be via Jokers, Planets, Tarots, or Spectrals. It also helps if you have an understanding of modifiers. 

Balatro is chock-full of things to unlock and secrets to uncover. One such secret is the mysterious – and seemingly useless – Blank Voucher. This Voucher will appear in the Shop almost every run and it does nothing. Well, it does nothing at first. What initially appears to be a useless money sink hides one of the most powerful effects in the game.

The deck-fixing roguelikelike poker of Balatro is chuffing excellent, no doubt, but my main criticism has been that the higher difficulty modes are just a bit boring. Having beat them myself, I didn't find them a fun or interesting challenge as much as an annoying one that required too much to go right. I'm glad to hear that they're being tweaked in an upcoming patch, which you can now test in a public beta on Steam, and even the lowest difficulty setting will be tweaked. Other changes include improved (hopefully) Steam Deck performance, balance tweaks, and better Joker-related Tags.

There are many ways to improve your deck in Balatro, and nearly all of them are a valid focus of any given run. Planet Cards can enhance your played hands, Tarot Cards offer a variety of small benefits, and Jokers drastically change how your deck plays. The rarest form of enhancement, however, is the Spectral Card. 

You won’t get far in Balatro if you don’t augment your starting deck. Even the best decks in Balatro struggle to go beyond Ante 2, so you better get your butt in gear if you want to succeed. There are many ways to gain power in Balatro, but one of the more interesting is through the use of Tarot Cards.

Balatro may start as a simple play on Poker, but it very quickly evolves into a whole different beast. Within the core loop, this is done through augmenting your starting deck. This could be through the acquisition of new cards, the powering up of old cards, or directly altering the value of the hands you are playing. 

Balatro is one of the intoxicating games to be released in 2024. Many players (ourselves included) sunk an ungodly amount of time into the pre-release demo, and even more time once it finally hit launch. Since then, the game has exploded in the roguelike deckbuilder scene, and rightfully so. 

, soon coming to mobile, is one of the best deckbuilding games with a poker-hand gameplay foundation. It introduces unique Joker cards that enhance and multiply your Chips per hand played. These Jokers bring diverse abilities that boost your scores and provide avenues for earning additional money or consumables, adding a strategic layer to the classic card game.

The poker-themed roguelike Balatro has sold 1m copies in its first month.

The creator of poker-themed rogue-like Balatro has spoken out about the game's rating drama, stating «it is what it is».

Developer LocalThunk's Balatro might have hit a bit of a bump last week after an unexpected ratings change, but that hasn't stopped the acclaimed poker-inspired rogue-like deckbuilder from selling over half a million copies in ten days, according to publisher Playstack.

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The roguelikelike deck-building poker game Balatro is frankly the only game I care for right now. My head fizzes with ideas for fiendish combos and deeply illegal hands. I'm delighted by its deserved success, with the makers boasting that it sold enough to become profitable within one hour then sold 250,000 copies in 72 hours. In a recent interview, the developer claims that part of why it's so damn successful is because they've barely played other roguelikelike deckbuilders so it's free to do its own thing outside genre conventions. What's interesting to me in this is how Balatro has built on a game which did influence it, the slot machine-building game Luck Be A Landlord.

may not have released with much fanfare, but in the few days since the game hit Steam, the roguelike deckbuilder has already garnered plenty of praise from players. The genre isn't unfamiliar with sleeper hits, with titles like and earning massive and dedicated fanbases for their simple, yet infinitely challenging gameplay loops. Based on what players are saying, may be the latest game to join the ranks of surprise hits.

When I sat down at my desk after lunch today, I thought, I'm just going to give this demo for Balatro a tiny go, just to get my head round its poker-based roguelike deckbuilding. Cut to several hours later and I've had to forcibly shut the game down and wrench myself away from it just to write this post, because listen, you need to go and play Balatro's demo right now, because hot damn this is the good stuff if you're into roguelike deckbuilders. I also say this as someone who's never played or understood a game of poker in her life, because let's face it, regular poker is quite boring. Balatro, on the other hand, is poker that's turbo-charged with magic Joker cards, tarot card multipliers, and blind conditions that make a successful hand increasingly tricky to pull off. And it's coming out in full real soon, too.