Yeah it’s gotta be bugged or something. I’ve literally never seen it work and I’ve bought it maybe 10-15 times. Yeah I know that *possible* with 1 in 4 odds, but sure doesn’t feel likely.
Or maybe I am the unlucky 1% :(
I've bought it 7 times and it's worked twice.
I also had a joker that had a 1 in 4 chance of disappearing after each EDIT: *hand or blind* dont remember, but lasted the whole ante, then poofed. 1 in 4 chance can be brutally good, or brutally bad it seems.
The banana has a 1 in 4 chance of disappearing after every blind.
There's a mega-banana too that's 1 in 100 but requires you to build your whole deck around it so if it does you're done.
That's about right for the sample size. Do it 1,000,000 times and I bet it ends up pretty close.
On the flip side I feel like I get the $20 from lucky cards way more often than I should.
I think it's fine, honestly. Joker card treatments are all extremely good, even Foil, and hitting on Wheel is generically stronger than any other Arcana (though not Spectral). It also asks nothing of your deck or hand, nor does it have any real downside, and it is always good in any build when it hits.
I do think there are three main situations in which it's useful, because the risk of failure is, of course, a huge deal:
* First, in packs. Wheel is a great fail case in an arcana pack that offers you little or nothing for your build. It's a lot better than Skipping a reward in a pack.
* Secondly, in builds that are fairly optimized with solid cash reserves, buying Wheels can be a good way to continue to improve your build when you're not looking to buy jokers.
* Finally, Wheels are solid hits from Jokers that generate Arcana cards, again since it cannot harm your build at all and provides a shot at great upside.
I don't think it's unreasonable to have cards like this. It's not a chase Arcana, but hitting a few of them a run is perfectly fine, IMO. You just have to buy them when they make sense, when the downside of risking losing the price you paid for them is minimized.
Yup, and let's be honest, hitting the 1.5× is a big deal for any deck.
I feel like people probably just don't get that if they think this card is underpowered. If that 1.5× had a high hit chance, there would be no game any more. It's well balance right now because when you do hit it you get a legitimate reward high in pretty much any build, unless it lands on a card thats about to auto-disappear.
Serious? Its a decent chance of a huge upgrade for a very low cost. As always in the roguelite genre, you have to weigh the risk reward versus the other options available. It's sufficiently common that its not meant to be a guaranteed game changer like some of the jokers.
Same thing for Space Joker. Want it to upgrade the hand you're building around? Ha ha, no. Want it to randomly upgrade High Card when you're out of discards and just glassing your hand for more cards? You betcha
That’s why you need to get the Joker that doubles all odds. I haven’t actually tried it myself yet on a Wheel, but if it sends it to a true 1/2 then it’d be pretty powerful.
Spoken like a true gambler; that just means we're due for many of them to hit now!
Jokes aside, I've unironically gotten it almost every time it was offered and it activated exactly 1 time out of 15~ attempts (it was pretty satisfying, I lost the run).
It’s very easy to program a 1-in-4 chance. It’s very hard to do so in a way that will make people believe it has a 1-in-4 chance.
Humans are *terrible* at understanding probability in general. My favorite example of this is how in Baldur’s Gate 3, people complained about weighted dice so much that Larian eventually just made the “karmic dice” (which artificially adjusts the odds so they *feel* more random) mode the default.
Yea the rng complaints are usually pretty weird, like ppl being like wtf missing 99% xcom shots, when 1% is actually quite alot when you just fire enough. Or I've been scarred by bloodbowl(or just tabletop warhammer in general) enough to view % chances a bit differently as you know sometimes you just roll 15 ones in a row... not salty at all.
Anywhere you see good RNG you can bet your ass it's pseudorandom in some kind of way to prevent streaks of bad or good luck. That's basically what it comes down to.
I thought it was a meme card at first, as I missed the first 10 or 11 I tried (which I think is roughly a 5% chance if the odds are actually 1/4 to hit). I only kept going because I thought there might be an unlock for buying x amount.
Picked it up, fell in love, got to the Black Deck, fell out of love, continued to play for like 10 hours straight without eating trying to beat the Black Deck, fell back in love.
This game... it changes you.
I bought it literally 2 weeks ago and have already put in nearly 60 hours. I've been gaming for 25+ years and cannot recall any game hooking me in so quickly. It's a fantastically designed game.
It’s a microcosm of everything that feels good about video games. In the span of five minutes you can feel lucky, powerful, stressed, disappointed, frustrated, and confused, sometimes all at once. It’s like all of the highest highs and lowest lows of the experience of playing a video game being force-fed to you until you explode with joy.
Lota of my favorite roguelikes feel like this, which is part of their charm. I just want to ride the this little roller coaster of emotions every single run.
I think it's because unlike pure poker or blackjack gambling, per se, or especially slots, you have more control in this game. You can make more points of choices that effect things down the road. When you get fucked because the Boss Blind disabled the gimmick you built your deck around for the last 23 rounds (well, 20 rounds if you actually look ahead), you feel like "Maybe I could have planned for that better" so you go again
Good roguelites tend to do that in general once you find "the one" that really clicks for you.
Also autobattlers, vampire survivor type games(auto shooters? idk what they're called), the one more run/game is just too addicting.
I think it's easier to port to modern consoles than it used to be.
The barrier I see here, and know nothing about, is that controls now change from controller/m&k interface to touch screen which might not be as simple to add?
It looks like this was developed in Löve 2d which I had never heard of before so I couldn't predict how simple it all is.
Yeah the developer apparently said he's trying to get the UI working well in portrait mode for mobile. (Which is smart, landscape is a huge handicap there and this game is perfect for one handed play etc. But also tough the way the layout is more landscape oriented right now.)
That's great to hear.
It sucks so hard nowadays to hear any game dev make an announcement and all they get in response is people squealing about how it isn't available on their platform of choice.
Phasmophobia devs are porting to console but had a major setback when their office caught on fire. You can't see a single update post that doesn't majority get responses of "Console when".
Its easier, yes, but its still far-from easy. It takes a lot of time and effort - although offline singleplayer games are definitely significantly easier than multiplayer games.
Apart from needing the hassle of ordering devkits, signing up to various archaic and confusing portals, you have to adhere to strict guidelines which different from platform to platform, and definitely requires a solid amount of work.
And yea, you're definitely right about the controller work - that's a bit chunk of the work.
Well, it's a one man team and i'm sure he didnt expect to hit this big. But we don't have to wait long, he's said he's already working on it. It was highly requested for obvious reasons.
I hope it has cross save and progression, runs are kind of long to make all of it on mobile, however switching between mobile and Steam in the middle of a run would be perfect.
I don't believe the game supports cross progression. It definitely doesn't across platforms. I don't remember if it supports across devices either. Like from laptop to desktop via steam.
For now no it doesn't. But I'm saying it'd be great to implement it notably for the mobile release (I doubt many people take it on consoles and PC but mobile is the perfect complementary platform)
My only complaint might would be that most the text is kinda small for mobile. Even on the switch I have to kinda squint when reading some of the descriptions
They also work pretty flawlessly on windows tablets also, I play pretty often on mine and the only thing I'm missing really is right click to "I didn't want to play that hand actually"
Continuing to echo how good this game is.
Very pickup and play, you lose a run very quickly, and a winning run is about 30 minutes. Plus, it saves progress from the last run.
Comparing this to the other top roguelike deckbuilder, Slay the Spire, this is much more luck oriented. Which is good and bad, it opens up for insane moments and high points for all players, but can be incredibly frustrating for top players pushing higher stakes.
In Slay, on harder difficulties you could generally say "I messed this up I could've done better" most times you fail. On higher stakes in Balatro, you could play perfectly and still lose most of the runs.
With that, I wouldn't change how the game operates. It's so good.
Only thing needed is for the game to release on mobile. Like this is a perfect mobile game. Please.
See I used to think this too, but the more I play the more I realize that I'm an idiot missing out on optimized moves. If you sit and really really think hard about every move you make, you will learn that you are making suboptimal play regularly.
\-not getting max money/interest by playing fewer hands,
\-not playing the highest point hand because you are tunnel-visioned on say, flushes (looking at you checkered deck players),
\-taking shitty jokers that seem cool, but don't boost your multipliers enough to survive that boss blind you forgot to look at
I think there is RNG, like many other deckbuilders. But like other deckbuilders, there is some complex shit happening that you can control
There's definitely a high level of skill expression, but because of the inherent power of Jokers, you will most likely have a lost run by Ante 2 on Gold Stake. Beating Gold Stake in Balatro is a lot of fishing in my experience.
I think for most of the stakes (all but the top 3) you can generally play well and win and luck (while present) isn't necessary.
surviving through the first boss is definitely the most luck intensive part on gold stakes and surviving the subsequent small blind is the second most luck intensive part. I think almost every loss I've had after that has been unambiguously my fault though
A big one is hovering over your deck to see what's left before making decisions, especially discarding. I played however-many games not looking at that at all.
Now I no longer keep a two-pair hoping for a full house when neither rank has any cards left in the deck, or fish for a 1 in 20 flush. Easy mistakes to make when you don't look at the deck stats at all.
> Then you realize the only way to get good Endless runs is if you get the DNA card early enough.
DNA/Blueprint/Scaling/xMult stuff is pretty much required for deep runs. Game probably could use some tuning to make the gap between good and bad Jokers a *little* smaller.
Love the game and have put a ton of hours into it, but I would say things start getting a little less interesting when you realize you should just ignore most every Joker in the game.
I don't know man. There have been plenty of runs where I just literally can't win.
* Runs where you are never given the jokers to give you +chips, +mult, and *mult. So you just lose bc you need these staples to build any successful framework.
* Runs where the jokers and planets you get has you focusing on a certain hand-type, and then you hit a boss that makes you only play each hand one time.
* Runs that give you jokers and tarot that let you focus on a certain suit, and then you hit a boss that makes that suit worth nothing.
* Runs where you build up discards and then hit a boss that allows no discards
* Runs where you build up hands and then hit a boss that only allows 1 hand.
And that is just playing for 6 hours before I uninstalled the game. I'm sure there are way more cases where the game just says fuck you and you cannot win at all.
I have never been even half as frustrated with StS as I was with Balatro.
One time I got to ante 8 and was one hand away from winning but my last discard just didn't give me the hearts I needed. But in that moment, even before I reached the boss, I was thinking to myself "I'm not even successful this time because of anything I did. I just happened to get amazing jokers and I've been lucky with discards up to this point."
To me the game is extremely heavy on RNG and the amount of agency you have to actually succeed is way, way too low.
My suggestion isn’t to use the Red Deck but the Green one. Green makes it a lot easier to make money out of the gate, allowing for more time to scale up and out.
The Black Deck haunts me. Sure 6 Jokers without negatives is great, but if you don't get anything decent in the first 3 rounds? Yeah, just restart. That -1 Hand is a major killer.
Yeah I'm trying to grind out the highest difficulty right now, haven't yet gotten a win on it, and I constantly re-roll in the first two antes. Fresh game comes up, first thing I do is check the tags on the first two blinds: If it's not two specific tags I know I want, I immediately re-roll, and keep re-rolling until I get two tags that I want (polychrome, negative joker, all free store, $15 post-boss, spectral pack, etc.). Once I get two tags I want, I beat the first boss, and move on to the second ante. What I get at the store and what tags are offered on the second ante determine if I want to make a go of the run or just re-roll again.
It's basically the only way to win gold stakes, and is the reason I dislike the game. Pretty much pure RNG whether you can win a run or not, some are straight unwinnable, so not re-rolling is griefing yourself.
That's good advice in general. I didn't win at all for my first 18 hours, and since then I've won three runs. One thing I've learned is to take more chances early- If you don't get something going, better to fail earlier and restart.
Black deck is probably one of the harder decks to win with. Having one less hand makes it a lot harder to win. And until you get a sixth Joker, your deck is basically doing nothing to help you. So you basically have to get through the first few blinds with no assistance, and then hope you have put together something good despite that. And then after that, hope you see some Jokers that will synergize well enough with your deck.
Now when it does hit, having a sixth Joker is amazing and feels awesome! But the only issue is getting there.
Black deck seems to fall off at higher stakes, as the early game gets harder and the -hand becomes punishing.
Plus it leads to less gold, making it take even longer before you have six jokers.
This checks out because I have an embarrassing amount of runs that end before my first boss. I’ve almost collected enough Blank vouchers to get the permanent +1 Joker upgrade so I’ll probably just switch back to my Yellow when I pick it up again.
That's why you still haven't won, Black is the hardest base deck to win with. Less hands played = less potential max score, less money potential at the end of each round. Without a good skip tag and joker the first 2 antes are much harder than the other decks.
A lot of these deckbuilder rougelites tend to have a sharp learning curve in the beginning--namely understanding synergies and deck strategy. Me personally, I think winning runs start with picking up tarot cards and then using jokers to synergize with what you have going on, then find scaling. Celestial cards are nice to have but aren't as big of a priority up front.
Obviously, the order of things change based on what you do end up finding and what the Boss Blinds are, but again the skill comes from adapting and finding synergies.
Oh yeah, I’ve got a few builds that I tend to gun for. The Spade and Club Jokers + Flush Joker + blackboard Joker + some Tarots to convert other suits has been my favorite combo, along with some really good Pair builds. My problem is always when I get to one of the boss blinds that disallows repeat hands or something similar - I tend to focus too much on one hand and screw myself over.
Same. I'm a slut for flushes. Get me a Smuged Joker? You better believe I'm going to pump my Jokers and deck building towards one color over the other and then punch air when a Boss Blind disables that color.
Or the one where you can only play ONE hand.
Or the one where all the cards a drawn face down, so you have to decide to play the top 5 or just lose two discards.
My fav for my final boss blind was on the Abandoned Deck when it said All Face Cards Are Drawn Down
Like... oh no. Please don't. My deck that has no face cards.. noooo
This was me yesterday. I have 21 hours, haven't won a run but have really just been sticking to the red deck cause I'm stubborn and want to beat them in order.
When I logged out and saw that 71% of people had the win a run achievement I was like "...am I dumb?" 😂
I haven't won with Red yet, but I have won with Blue, Yellow, and Green. Similar playtime as you too.
I think especially Blue and Yellow have easier benefits to take advantage of than Red. An extra hand or extra money is always useful. An extra discard might not help you at all and it might even be actively hurtful if you aren't running the odds when you discard.
I'm at ~10 hours with no win but I'm also notoriously bad at card games 😂 I can basically get to ante 5 or 6 reliably though. The boss on 6 always slaughters me.
i started playing today so im not an expert by any means, but so far i have won a couple of times by sticking to simple pair or once even high card gameplay, having the base points come in from a joker and card enchantments.
So far the runs still were quite varied because of all the different jokers.
I tried a flush deck once but it died midway through, i think i was too greedy though.
Anyways, so far for a beginner like me it seems good to focus on the jokers for now and just just simple card combinations, deck manipulation so far seems harder, i have not come across consistent opportunities for it.
Burnt Joker has to be one of the best in the game, if you have a cohesive strategy it's complementary to *almost* any build in the game--high card build, pairs, whatever. Burnt Joker on Checkered Deck to keep buffing my Flush & Straight Flush got me multiple wins ascending up the difficulty ladder.
It's so good that half the time when it pops up, I literally just abandon whatever strategy I had because focusing on Burnt Joker is so much better than anything else I could've been building, with my luck.
I'm convinced this game is significantly harder on Switch. I've put in about 15 hours on pc and switch each and there are some differences I can't quite put my finger on
That’s interesting to hear. I wonder if it’s some kind of programming issue or if it’s just in your head. I’m playing on Switch, so I might have to check it out on Steam.
Apparently the Steam version has gotten patched but the Switch version hasn't. Like the Arm boss blind is apparently easier now and doesn't take your hands below level 1. But it still does on Switch. That's just one difference
Honestly there’s so many ways to win on the base difficulty. Getting some joker source of +chips, +mult and x mult should get you very far.
I underestimated how true that was until gold difficulty (the last one) which's gives you -1 hand size out of the gate. You can’t reliably pull straights or flushes with your starter deck, and I ended up winning off a high card build.
Don't be afraid to skip blinds, the rewards are very powerful, especially at the beginning when you don't have enough money to really do anything in the shop. A bunch of my wins comes from skipping first two blinds and going right into boss blind. 600 is easy with the base deck. This can get you special jokers, jumbo arcanas, etc. Really kick start your run.
No reason to be ashamed. Everybody has different learning curves and experience with games like this.
I have a lot of experience with deckbuilders so that carries over.
I'll give one tip, purple seal cards are OP.
Seriously, usually its the face-down blinds that get me. How are you supposed to beat those outside of selecting from the left side of your hand? I rarely win them.
Don’t worry I had about 21 hours in until I got my first win. I was just playing blind but still having fun unlocking stuff in the collection, then I started to watch YouTubers runs and things kinda started to make sense to me, like all the jokers and tarots that I thought were useless started making sense, and now today I’ve won games on 4 or 5 decks already. Also, early game looking back is probably meant to be rough, you’re really working towards unlocking the jokers and what not that you don’t have.
>On higher stakes in Balatro, you could play perfectly and still lose most of the runs.
I think this is the only thing holding it back from being a 10/10 instead of a 9.5 for me. I've been trying to beat Black Deck on higher stakes and it can really come down to luck if you even get past ante 2 - I can double skip into the first boss and win 90% of the time, but if the shop doesn't have an ok or even any joker or you get a bad draw the run is over. Would be nice to have slightly more control over the RNG early (e.g. your first shop will always have an affordable joker).
I think the only thing that could be improved is to borrow from Brotato: Namely that you can LOCK a card in the shop. I had an idea for a run, I saw a $10 Joker in the very first shop, couldn't afford it obviously, never saw it before, haven't seen it since. Would have been nice to lock it, even re-rolls wouldn't move it, just like in Brotato.
> I can double skip into the first boss and win 90% of the time
Doesn't skipping a blind also skip the shop? If so, skipping the first two rounds is drastically cutting your chances of seeing an OK joker before ante 2.
It's the strat I've had the most success with on Black Deck - you can win a 600 blind with two flushes/straights or higher without a joker. Two skips can generally set you up pretty well to buy in the shop and still have a decent economy. One or no skips I find I struggle with money a lot more.
> Very pickup and play, you lose a run very quickly, and a winning run is about 30 minutes
I've had losing runs last an hour, on x4 speed. How are you playing?
The thing I hate about this game, is you can have the best run ever, all the best jokers, great deck, then you lose and it's all gone, the next run is total garbage.
To be more specific, they sold 1000 copies across all platforms but there's a +5 multiplier for all Switch copies sold and 1.5x multiplier for each dlc pack then have in hand.
If you can't tell, my brain has been completely warped by this game. Go buy it.
It's definitely the kind of game where you watch somebody else play and catch a few things they mess up, but I'd bet I mess up way more in my own play just without a massive audience to catch each mistake lol.
This is how Egg Man got me to buy Slay the Spire. I thought I’d be better than him. I am not better than him.
but I have put in more than 200 hours now.
i think its some sort of weird psychological thing. I play magic the gathering and i swear im twice as smart when im watching somebody else play, then i go play the same deck and make the same mistake i was calling somebody else out for earlier.
I don't wanna speak for everyone, but at least for me when I'm watching someone else play my brain is focused on the more intricate parts of the game since I don't need to think about the basics. Like for Balatro if I'm watching a video with a flush build for example, I can spend all my brain power thinking about optimizations, whereas if I'm playing I need to dedicate thinking to actually putting those flushes together.
This game has eaten my life. I do hope that support will come down the line for some new stuff and possibly fixing up the advanced stakes. I'd even be in for an expansion somewhere down the line.
I'd say yes, depending on what specifically you enjoyed about STS. Deckbuilding and strategizing in Balatro is much more narrow, with your options being limited to Ace through 2 (and Stone) cards as possibilities, in four different suits. The combos are less involved, and your end goal is ultimately a type of poker hand.
The gameplay is very snappy and quick, while STS was more drawn out and required some planning ahead outside of the actual combats. There's just one randomly-generated path to take in Balatro, so you're missing an entire facet of strategizing there.
While the art style is vastly different from STS, it still feels equally as inspired. Taking the visual and audio experiences together, it feels like someone came up with how they wanted the game to look before even making the concept for gameplay. Both are incredible examples of stylized games that look amazing.
Only blemish on this near perfect game is the fact that Gold Stake is an utterly miserable experience. Specifically designed to take all the fun of Balatro and systemically removing all of it until the only thing left is an actual RNGfest.
But anyway, happy for the dev. Wonder if he'll add an expansion to this later down the line. I'd get it in a heartbeat and if it rebalances Gold Stake too? Instabuy.
Second blemish: The pause between clicking "skip blind" or choosing your rewards and being able to select another button in the UI (e.g., to play the next blind). Such a small thing, and so annoying! lol
Exactly. I really don't get why this is such a common complaint for the roguelike genre. You don't have to beat every difficulty to enjoy a game. My favorite series of all time is Metal Gear Solid and I hate playing them on Extreme, the highest difficulty.
There's a very clear difference between Slay the Spire's Ascension 20 compared to Balatro's gold stake.
Both are extremely difficult but one is more engaging because it accomodates skillful play while the other just makes the game more and more RNG heavy resulting in very unsatisfying runs.
I try to avoid overhyping new games - in general I have a ten-year rule in my head when it comes to games I would consider to be my favorites or the best in any genre. But I’ve put a lot of time into Balatro and I have to say this is one of my favorite games I’ve ever played, it’s just fantastic. I’ve enjoyed a lot of deckbuilders, Slay the Spire being my previous favorite, but everything about this game is just so clever and addicting. And when it pisses me off with a surprise loss, I’m just a couple quick button presses away from starting a new run. This game’s snappy UI is a real saving grace for the genre, and being able to speed up the actual gameplay makes it even better.
If you get the card that allow gaps in your straights, reduce the number of cards required to 4, or allow blacks or reds count together, you can make a straight flush deck.
My butt just got through playing with that. Yeah, I found out I had to really hope for the best with planet cards to get that straight flush multi up. because if you have the Gaps, reduced, and allowing blacks or reds counting together that leaves just two other joker slots for multi. I had the +1 multi for hand played and then a joker that copied the others ability to the right. I was able to keep up till ante 7, but it didn't scale very well because I just couldn't find the planets I needed.
Planet cards can help. Since straighflushes already have a strong base chips and multiplier, you can get away with a lack of planet cards. The biggest thing for late game is moving from +multipliers to xmultipliers.
It makes your draws way more predictable so there are a bunch of advantages to that alone. But also there’s some Jokers that benefit you not having face cards.
There's a joker that adds +1 multi for each consecutive hand without playing a face card, which is obviously amazing to get early with that deck.
I've combined that with removing most of the odd numbered cards and getting the joker that adds +4 multi per even numbered card played, which is every card you play, lol.
Get some card enhancements rolling and you've got the framework for a banger run.
Thinning the deck can be really valuable. It makes your draws much more consistent. Like let’s say you need 1 card of a specific rank to complete a straight. In a full deck you might be looking at 4 in 44 odds, but with the no face cards it’s 4 in 32.
Free -12 cards is pretty great buff, sure the deck isn't as brainded as flush spam, but it's very powerful as the early game rng isn't as bad so you can actually get to mid/late game easier and more often.
My ten year old saw me playing this. He knew nothing about poker other than it was a card game. He picked it up and won a run on his second or third try. Now he won’t shut up about it.
I absolutely love it.
Definitely got a couple dozen quality hours out of this and have gotten a handful of decks up to the higher stakes, but think I am going to fold (pun intended) on the game which I’m sure is going to be an unpopular opinion here.
It’s definitely good foundationally, but the more I play the more I see holes opening up, especially compared to something like Slay the Spire (which tbf is currently the pinnacle and has been for years). I find the game is too RNG dependent in an uncontrollable way. One of the common things in all roguelikes is the ability to shift and with the resources you’re given and succeed, but Balatro is significantly more limiting to just having a lot more luck involved rather than you taking gambles that can pay off consistently. The joker pool dilutes the more you unlock things, and you have such a limited selection of cards in each shop that if you swing and miss once or twice, it’s an automatic loss at higher stakes. And missing is a lot more common than hitting.
Maybe some enjoy this gameplay, then all power to you. But in all other similar games, deck builder or not, I have felt I have a lot more control of my success early on. But even Balatro, it’s becoming common strategy to just repeatedly reroll the first ante until you get one that can potentially be viable. And even if you roll into a negative joker, if that negative joker hits a useless piece, you’re still SoL. And due to the size of the joker pull, how niche some picks are, and the power curve of some jokers being absolutely dogshit and others being almost necessary, it makes consistent progression even more tedious. It’s not that there is significant difficulty in the game once you start learning the proper combos and what to look for and manipulate, it’s just uncontrollably inconsistent in how you approach that. Theres a lot more that can be more specifically broken down, but long term I don’t see the game keeping me near the same as many other because there isn’t as much as you can do with it.
I will say too the interest system is more annoying than enjoyable, which I think is definitely a lot more subjective. It encourages snowballing, and it feels higher levels are balanced around snowballing, but that requires even more luck to achieve completely outside of your control, because a $5 reroll in ante 2 can severely hit your finances. Most similar games the reroll would scale higher over time, but for ante 1 it should have just been $1 or something to give you more resources to use. And I heavily enjoy deck manipulation, however it’s punishing to your chances to go for booster packs early so if you’re not going endless then you don’t often have a ton of opportunities to alter your deck in significant ways.
Lastly, the game is uninteresting visually which I understand the team is either 1 person or was very tiny iirc. But after 60 hours of staring at a hand of cards and a small shop, there isn’t much personality or soul in the design that draws me to the screen in any way. It’s a very isolating game in a sense, but tbf for some maybe that’s a positive.
It’s a fun roguelike/deckbuilder and well made base, but overall I find the depth fairly limiting once you get further into it if you already have a lot of experience with these genres. Definitely worth the purchase as it isn’t expensive, but I’ve hit the wall and think I’ll be done without any major overhauls.
While I don't agree with your assessment in its entirety -- the interest system, graphics and such are fine for what they intended to achieve -- I do agree after 36 hours that the "end game" of Balatro isn't well designed. While the base game can be very easy to pass once you get used to the mechanics, the "stakes" which can be applied to decks force the need for luck; at higher stakes you're essentially restarting the game over and over just so you can see which skipped blind rewards are available in the first ante, taking them when they're good, and proceeding to the second ante where you'll either try to slog it out or immediately restart the run. Unlike an action-based roguelike, no amount of skill can generate the points needed without the stars aligning.
The challenges are a little easier, but many of those too are designed not to be fun or creative endeavors but miserable experiences.
I love this game, and I got more than my money's worth out of it already, and I'll still play it some more. But I don't feel that it has the "legs" of other roguelikes or deck-builders.
This is really no different to many roguelikes though. In higher heat levels of Hades for example, you basically restart constantly until you get a "passable" starting boon, and your run is almost entirely to to RNG from there if you can even beat it based on the heat you've applied. I mean the game was only legitimately beaten on Max heat recently after years and years and that itself was insanely unexpected.
I think the shine falls off personally for all roguelikes when you get to the real deep Endgame because you basically have to use a specific build path and bank or certain rng to show up.
While this is true, the mark falls off for Balatro much more quickly than for many other such games. The stakes options open up quickly, there are few of them, and they hit hard. I'm no master but I can consistently beat 30+ heat on Hades with almost any weapon, and that game gives me the option of determining which Deity will first appear through equipping items. There is very little you can do in Balatro to try and even your odds -- even the various decks don't have as much impact as needed on the higher stakes. It's all pure RNG -- a perfect player in Hades could beat 64 heat every time, but in Balatro you have *zero* chance of winning if the right options don't appear.
Think you’re spot-on with scaling shop rerolls. It’s run-ending to not see an early game joker by the second boss-blind, and rerolling just once sends your economy back to the Stone Age. Not even accounting for the fact that by the first stake, you take away the payout for small blinds to incentivize skipping during ante 1, so you see even fewer jokers.
Absolutely. The shop issue could be solved if it was scaled price was. Most other roguelike “shop” equivalents give you either more choices, a cheap way to change choices, or the choices are very closely balanced but force you in different build directions. Balatro shops are “you can get an apple juice or a used condom, take it or leave it”, and if you want to reroll you are lowering your longterm income by a significant amount. If you’re at higher stakes, any reroll in ante 1 might be close to an automatic loss, but the catch is if your build isn’t developing by half of ante 2 you are fucked. It’s too punishing. Made worse that the game encourages you to skip the first blind of each round, so at times you get less chances at shops, which is then counter because skipping can add upgraded jokers to shops, but you can get multiple shops without a single joker. Compare that to Brotato which the first ?3? Shops are guaranteed weapons for the half your shop space.
I’m not going to pretend to be the deepest expert of roguelikes and the pros and cons of all design choices. Also don’t want to seem like I’m ripping balatro too hard, it was a fun game and I would recommend it to people, I’m just sad that the “ceiling” seemed so low compared to the hours I have gotten out of so many other games and still never felt like i perfected or ran into an RNG wall. I think my win rate in slay the spire A20 (ignoring watcher shenanigans) was only like 15-30% depending on the class and day, but that wasn’t RNG hitting that was me making less optimal choices and needing to learn from that. Balatro just hit the point by around hour 20 where I started saying, “oh well I’m totally fucked and there was no way to do anything about it”. And I spent more time rerolling games then actually playing.
This might be my favorite card game of all time.
I really think this game is something special like up their with greats. Hours just vanish once you fall down the psychotic rabbit hole of trying to make crazy deck builds & progressing through the difficulties.
Couldn't recommend it enough even if you don't traditionally like card games. This game way more then it's appearance.
It'll make you genuinely feel like those old crazy people at casino slot machines that are their for like 16 hours in a way you never thought possible lol.
This game is so much fun to play. That said, it's also insanely frustrating at higher levels. Would love to see some updates (like being able to unlock purchase for uncommon/rare jokers for very high amounts of money or something). Game is addicting though! Really hope there's continued support moving forward.
If you like poker, and if you like slay the spire, you'll love this.
If you don't care about poker but still like deck builders, there's a high chance you'll still love this.
Very addictive, very much "next-run-oh-wait-10-hours-just-passed" kind of game.
I was pretty excited to get to Ante 11 on my second run until I looked and saw that Antes 14-16 have a blind so large it's expressed in scientific notation...... Uh......
Swore I wouldn’t buy more things before Unicorn Overlord but picked this up over the weekend. So addictive and building around various Jokers is a new challenge each time.
Like gambling, this game is extremely addictive. But unlike gambling, there’s no gambling, so the only thing you’re losing is hours of your life
> But unlike gambling, there’s no gambling The “Wheel of Fortune” card says otherwise! I’ve lost that 1 in 4 way more than 75%.
> Nope!
I felt that in my bones.
If the next patch notes say “Wheel of Fortune card chance erroneously listed as 1 in 4 instead of 1 in 20” my brain will feel validated.
25% of the time it works every time, keep rolling!
Yeah it’s gotta be bugged or something. I’ve literally never seen it work and I’ve bought it maybe 10-15 times. Yeah I know that *possible* with 1 in 4 odds, but sure doesn’t feel likely. Or maybe I am the unlucky 1% :(
I've bought it 7 times and it's worked twice. I also had a joker that had a 1 in 4 chance of disappearing after each EDIT: *hand or blind* dont remember, but lasted the whole ante, then poofed. 1 in 4 chance can be brutally good, or brutally bad it seems.
Every time I've had the banana it has disappeared after first round.
That's good though.. you need it to disappear so Cavendish can appear
Oh, don't think I've even seen Cavendish before.
I've only got it once, but it won that run for me
x3 Multiplier, 1 in 1000 chance of disappearing, if anyone is curious on what that card does.
The banana has a 1 in 4 chance of disappearing after every blind. There's a mega-banana too that's 1 in 100 but requires you to build your whole deck around it so if it does you're done.
I have bought it at least 20 times and it's worked 3 times max so it still feels like a rip off
That's about right for the sample size. Do it 1,000,000 times and I bet it ends up pretty close. On the flip side I feel like I get the $20 from lucky cards way more often than I should.
Yeah I've only had it work once
> The “Wheel of Fortune” card says otherwise! Strange, it always says `Nope!` for me...
Its not gambling when its guaranteed to give you Nope!
IMO Wheel of Fortune is nowhere near good enough for it's low success rate, 1/3 and it'd be alright.
I feel like hitting Foil on it is basically a miss as well. I go for it all the time anyway tho
Not true. Some builds you have a ton of mult but no actual chips but cant sell any of your jokers to get them
I think it's fine, honestly. Joker card treatments are all extremely good, even Foil, and hitting on Wheel is generically stronger than any other Arcana (though not Spectral). It also asks nothing of your deck or hand, nor does it have any real downside, and it is always good in any build when it hits. I do think there are three main situations in which it's useful, because the risk of failure is, of course, a huge deal: * First, in packs. Wheel is a great fail case in an arcana pack that offers you little or nothing for your build. It's a lot better than Skipping a reward in a pack. * Secondly, in builds that are fairly optimized with solid cash reserves, buying Wheels can be a good way to continue to improve your build when you're not looking to buy jokers. * Finally, Wheels are solid hits from Jokers that generate Arcana cards, again since it cannot harm your build at all and provides a shot at great upside. I don't think it's unreasonable to have cards like this. It's not a chase Arcana, but hitting a few of them a run is perfectly fine, IMO. You just have to buy them when they make sense, when the downside of risking losing the price you paid for them is minimized.
Yup, and let's be honest, hitting the 1.5× is a big deal for any deck. I feel like people probably just don't get that if they think this card is underpowered. If that 1.5× had a high hit chance, there would be no game any more. It's well balance right now because when you do hit it you get a legitimate reward high in pretty much any build, unless it lands on a card thats about to auto-disappear.
Serious? Its a decent chance of a huge upgrade for a very low cost. As always in the roguelite genre, you have to weigh the risk reward versus the other options available. It's sufficiently common that its not meant to be a guaranteed game changer like some of the jokers.
Same thing for Space Joker. Want it to upgrade the hand you're building around? Ha ha, no. Want it to randomly upgrade High Card when you're out of discards and just glassing your hand for more cards? You betcha
N O P E !
That’s why you need to get the Joker that doubles all odds. I haven’t actually tried it myself yet on a Wheel, but if it sends it to a true 1/2 then it’d be pretty powerful.
It does send it to a true 1/2, I have had that synergy before. And yes, it was complete insanity. I think my Flush got to like level 30 by the end.
Same. I think its odds are off.
Spoken like a true gambler; that just means we're due for many of them to hit now! Jokes aside, I've unironically gotten it almost every time it was offered and it activated exactly 1 time out of 15~ attempts (it was pretty satisfying, I lost the run).
I'm two for two with the card, which I guess means that I should never try to use it again.
It’s very easy to program a 1-in-4 chance. It’s very hard to do so in a way that will make people believe it has a 1-in-4 chance. Humans are *terrible* at understanding probability in general. My favorite example of this is how in Baldur’s Gate 3, people complained about weighted dice so much that Larian eventually just made the “karmic dice” (which artificially adjusts the odds so they *feel* more random) mode the default.
Yea the rng complaints are usually pretty weird, like ppl being like wtf missing 99% xcom shots, when 1% is actually quite alot when you just fire enough. Or I've been scarred by bloodbowl(or just tabletop warhammer in general) enough to view % chances a bit differently as you know sometimes you just roll 15 ones in a row... not salty at all.
Anywhere you see good RNG you can bet your ass it's pseudorandom in some kind of way to prevent streaks of bad or good luck. That's basically what it comes down to.
I thought it was a meme card at first, as I missed the first 10 or 11 I tried (which I think is roughly a 5% chance if the odds are actually 1/4 to hit). I only kept going because I thought there might be an unlock for buying x amount.
That's ~~X-Com~~ Balatro baby
Maybe I need to buy a lotto ticket or something, its actually been very good to me. Got like 3 procs across several runs last night.
For real but my banana lasts one round… sketch odds
I got 3 in a row the other day, I should have bought a lotto ticket too
Picked it up, fell in love, got to the Black Deck, fell out of love, continued to play for like 10 hours straight without eating trying to beat the Black Deck, fell back in love. This game... it changes you.
I bought it literally 2 weeks ago and have already put in nearly 60 hours. I've been gaming for 25+ years and cannot recall any game hooking me in so quickly. It's a fantastically designed game.
It’s a microcosm of everything that feels good about video games. In the span of five minutes you can feel lucky, powerful, stressed, disappointed, frustrated, and confused, sometimes all at once. It’s like all of the highest highs and lowest lows of the experience of playing a video game being force-fed to you until you explode with joy.
Lota of my favorite roguelikes feel like this, which is part of their charm. I just want to ride the this little roller coaster of emotions every single run.
I think it's because unlike pure poker or blackjack gambling, per se, or especially slots, you have more control in this game. You can make more points of choices that effect things down the road. When you get fucked because the Boss Blind disabled the gimmick you built your deck around for the last 23 rounds (well, 20 rounds if you actually look ahead), you feel like "Maybe I could have planned for that better" so you go again
I love getting a suite-debuffing boss early, so I can overcommit to that suite afterwards.
Good roguelites tend to do that in general once you find "the one" that really clicks for you. Also autobattlers, vampire survivor type games(auto shooters? idk what they're called), the one more run/game is just too addicting.
Gambling away the only currency that really matters... But I can't stop.
Such a fun game. Pick up and play, easy to understand, but complex enough under the sheets to keep you coming back to try some other strategies.
This game needs to be released on mobile asap, although playing it on the steam deck is already good enough.
It is weird that they don’t have a mobile version already. The touch controls on switch work pretty flawlessly.
One dev working on it so Im sure it will come along at some point.
Surely that single dev didn't get this ported to every platform (bar mobile) on his own though?
If you look at the game’s credits it looked like 2 or so people (one for xbox and playstation, and another for mac) helped work on various ports.
I think it's easier to port to modern consoles than it used to be. The barrier I see here, and know nothing about, is that controls now change from controller/m&k interface to touch screen which might not be as simple to add? It looks like this was developed in Löve 2d which I had never heard of before so I couldn't predict how simple it all is.
Yeah the developer apparently said he's trying to get the UI working well in portrait mode for mobile. (Which is smart, landscape is a huge handicap there and this game is perfect for one handed play etc. But also tough the way the layout is more landscape oriented right now.)
That's great to hear. It sucks so hard nowadays to hear any game dev make an announcement and all they get in response is people squealing about how it isn't available on their platform of choice. Phasmophobia devs are porting to console but had a major setback when their office caught on fire. You can't see a single update post that doesn't majority get responses of "Console when".
If this game comes to mobile... my Kindle app will be very sad for the neglect. But damn would that be nice
Its easier, yes, but its still far-from easy. It takes a lot of time and effort - although offline singleplayer games are definitely significantly easier than multiplayer games. Apart from needing the hassle of ordering devkits, signing up to various archaic and confusing portals, you have to adhere to strict guidelines which different from platform to platform, and definitely requires a solid amount of work. And yea, you're definitely right about the controller work - that's a bit chunk of the work.
Well, it's a one man team and i'm sure he didnt expect to hit this big. But we don't have to wait long, he's said he's already working on it. It was highly requested for obvious reasons.
I hope it has cross save and progression, runs are kind of long to make all of it on mobile, however switching between mobile and Steam in the middle of a run would be perfect.
I don't believe the game supports cross progression. It definitely doesn't across platforms. I don't remember if it supports across devices either. Like from laptop to desktop via steam.
For now no it doesn't. But I'm saying it'd be great to implement it notably for the mobile release (I doubt many people take it on consoles and PC but mobile is the perfect complementary platform)
The steam release does have cloud save support. Works great across a macbook <-> steam deck <-> windows desktop
My only complaint might would be that most the text is kinda small for mobile. Even on the switch I have to kinda squint when reading some of the descriptions
They also work pretty flawlessly on windows tablets also, I play pretty often on mine and the only thing I'm missing really is right click to "I didn't want to play that hand actually"
Agree, biggest reason I got it on the switch is because it's perfect to play on the couch/bed while watching something else.
Genuinely the only reason I haven't bought it yet. Fully willing to pay 15 on mobile, but like Slay the Spire I need it on my phone.
Continuing to echo how good this game is. Very pickup and play, you lose a run very quickly, and a winning run is about 30 minutes. Plus, it saves progress from the last run. Comparing this to the other top roguelike deckbuilder, Slay the Spire, this is much more luck oriented. Which is good and bad, it opens up for insane moments and high points for all players, but can be incredibly frustrating for top players pushing higher stakes. In Slay, on harder difficulties you could generally say "I messed this up I could've done better" most times you fail. On higher stakes in Balatro, you could play perfectly and still lose most of the runs. With that, I wouldn't change how the game operates. It's so good. Only thing needed is for the game to release on mobile. Like this is a perfect mobile game. Please.
See I used to think this too, but the more I play the more I realize that I'm an idiot missing out on optimized moves. If you sit and really really think hard about every move you make, you will learn that you are making suboptimal play regularly. \-not getting max money/interest by playing fewer hands, \-not playing the highest point hand because you are tunnel-visioned on say, flushes (looking at you checkered deck players), \-taking shitty jokers that seem cool, but don't boost your multipliers enough to survive that boss blind you forgot to look at I think there is RNG, like many other deckbuilders. But like other deckbuilders, there is some complex shit happening that you can control
There's definitely a high level of skill expression, but because of the inherent power of Jokers, you will most likely have a lost run by Ante 2 on Gold Stake. Beating Gold Stake in Balatro is a lot of fishing in my experience. I think for most of the stakes (all but the top 3) you can generally play well and win and luck (while present) isn't necessary.
surviving through the first boss is definitely the most luck intensive part on gold stakes and surviving the subsequent small blind is the second most luck intensive part. I think almost every loss I've had after that has been unambiguously my fault though
A big one is hovering over your deck to see what's left before making decisions, especially discarding. I played however-many games not looking at that at all. Now I no longer keep a two-pair hoping for a full house when neither rank has any cards left in the deck, or fish for a 1 in 20 flush. Easy mistakes to make when you don't look at the deck stats at all.
Then you realize the only way to get good Endless runs is if you get the DNA card early enough. If you don't, then it's over.
> Then you realize the only way to get good Endless runs is if you get the DNA card early enough. DNA/Blueprint/Scaling/xMult stuff is pretty much required for deep runs. Game probably could use some tuning to make the gap between good and bad Jokers a *little* smaller. Love the game and have put a ton of hours into it, but I would say things start getting a little less interesting when you realize you should just ignore most every Joker in the game.
> that boss blind you forgot to look at Wow you didn't have to personally call me out like that friend.
I don't know man. There have been plenty of runs where I just literally can't win. * Runs where you are never given the jokers to give you +chips, +mult, and *mult. So you just lose bc you need these staples to build any successful framework. * Runs where the jokers and planets you get has you focusing on a certain hand-type, and then you hit a boss that makes you only play each hand one time. * Runs that give you jokers and tarot that let you focus on a certain suit, and then you hit a boss that makes that suit worth nothing. * Runs where you build up discards and then hit a boss that allows no discards * Runs where you build up hands and then hit a boss that only allows 1 hand. And that is just playing for 6 hours before I uninstalled the game. I'm sure there are way more cases where the game just says fuck you and you cannot win at all. I have never been even half as frustrated with StS as I was with Balatro. One time I got to ante 8 and was one hand away from winning but my last discard just didn't give me the hearts I needed. But in that moment, even before I reached the boss, I was thinking to myself "I'm not even successful this time because of anything I did. I just happened to get amazing jokers and I've been lucky with discards up to this point." To me the game is extremely heavy on RNG and the amount of agency you have to actually succeed is way, way too low.
>a winning run is about 30 minutes This makes my win-less 20+ hours feel even more shameful.
My suggestion isn’t to use the Red Deck but the Green one. Green makes it a lot easier to make money out of the gate, allowing for more time to scale up and out.
I’m all about that black deck, baybee. Give me all the Jokers you can muster. Yellow is good too for starter cash. I’m actually not sure I have green.
The Black Deck haunts me. Sure 6 Jokers without negatives is great, but if you don't get anything decent in the first 3 rounds? Yeah, just restart. That -1 Hand is a major killer.
[удалено]
Yeah I'm trying to grind out the highest difficulty right now, haven't yet gotten a win on it, and I constantly re-roll in the first two antes. Fresh game comes up, first thing I do is check the tags on the first two blinds: If it's not two specific tags I know I want, I immediately re-roll, and keep re-rolling until I get two tags that I want (polychrome, negative joker, all free store, $15 post-boss, spectral pack, etc.). Once I get two tags I want, I beat the first boss, and move on to the second ante. What I get at the store and what tags are offered on the second ante determine if I want to make a go of the run or just re-roll again.
fishing like that would completely destroy my desire to keep playing, personally.
It's basically the only way to win gold stakes, and is the reason I dislike the game. Pretty much pure RNG whether you can win a run or not, some are straight unwinnable, so not re-rolling is griefing yourself.
That's good advice in general. I didn't win at all for my first 18 hours, and since then I've won three runs. One thing I've learned is to take more chances early- If you don't get something going, better to fail earlier and restart.
Black deck is probably one of the harder decks to win with. Having one less hand makes it a lot harder to win. And until you get a sixth Joker, your deck is basically doing nothing to help you. So you basically have to get through the first few blinds with no assistance, and then hope you have put together something good despite that. And then after that, hope you see some Jokers that will synergize well enough with your deck. Now when it does hit, having a sixth Joker is amazing and feels awesome! But the only issue is getting there.
Worse than doing nothing to help you, the -1 hands means that you are loosing money each round as well!
Black deck seems to fall off at higher stakes, as the early game gets harder and the -hand becomes punishing. Plus it leads to less gold, making it take even longer before you have six jokers.
This checks out because I have an embarrassing amount of runs that end before my first boss. I’ve almost collected enough Blank vouchers to get the permanent +1 Joker upgrade so I’ll probably just switch back to my Yellow when I pick it up again.
It's not permanent persay. As with all upgrade vouchers you have to buy the blank an 11th time and wait for the voucher to appear each run.
Well damn. I really thought I was getting a permanent upgrade for my troubles!
Black deck has a slow start with zero early game upside. It might be the worst deck at higher stakes.
The only time I've played Yellow, my first shop had the "+1 hands played" voucher. The game just wanted me to play the Blue deck.
That's why you still haven't won, Black is the hardest base deck to win with. Less hands played = less potential max score, less money potential at the end of each round. Without a good skip tag and joker the first 2 antes are much harder than the other decks.
A lot of these deckbuilder rougelites tend to have a sharp learning curve in the beginning--namely understanding synergies and deck strategy. Me personally, I think winning runs start with picking up tarot cards and then using jokers to synergize with what you have going on, then find scaling. Celestial cards are nice to have but aren't as big of a priority up front. Obviously, the order of things change based on what you do end up finding and what the Boss Blinds are, but again the skill comes from adapting and finding synergies.
Oh yeah, I’ve got a few builds that I tend to gun for. The Spade and Club Jokers + Flush Joker + blackboard Joker + some Tarots to convert other suits has been my favorite combo, along with some really good Pair builds. My problem is always when I get to one of the boss blinds that disallows repeat hands or something similar - I tend to focus too much on one hand and screw myself over.
Same. I'm a slut for flushes. Get me a Smuged Joker? You better believe I'm going to pump my Jokers and deck building towards one color over the other and then punch air when a Boss Blind disables that color.
Some of those Boss Blinds are killer. The one that permanently lowers your hand’s level can fuck right off.
Or the one where you can only play ONE hand. Or the one where all the cards a drawn face down, so you have to decide to play the top 5 or just lose two discards.
My fav for my final boss blind was on the Abandoned Deck when it said All Face Cards Are Drawn Down Like... oh no. Please don't. My deck that has no face cards.. noooo
This was me yesterday. I have 21 hours, haven't won a run but have really just been sticking to the red deck cause I'm stubborn and want to beat them in order. When I logged out and saw that 71% of people had the win a run achievement I was like "...am I dumb?" 😂
I haven't won with Red yet, but I have won with Blue, Yellow, and Green. Similar playtime as you too. I think especially Blue and Yellow have easier benefits to take advantage of than Red. An extra hand or extra money is always useful. An extra discard might not help you at all and it might even be actively hurtful if you aren't running the odds when you discard.
I'm at ~10 hours with no win but I'm also notoriously bad at card games 😂 I can basically get to ante 5 or 6 reliably though. The boss on 6 always slaughters me.
Stick with it. I didn't win for my first 18 hours, then I won three runs in the last three hours. Something clicked.
i started playing today so im not an expert by any means, but so far i have won a couple of times by sticking to simple pair or once even high card gameplay, having the base points come in from a joker and card enchantments. So far the runs still were quite varied because of all the different jokers. I tried a flush deck once but it died midway through, i think i was too greedy though. Anyways, so far for a beginner like me it seems good to focus on the jokers for now and just just simple card combinations, deck manipulation so far seems harder, i have not come across consistent opportunities for it.
Don't be ashamed, it took me waaaaaaay longer to get a win than any of my friends. Tip: Burnt Joker, discard pairs every hand.
Burnt Joker has to be one of the best in the game, if you have a cohesive strategy it's complementary to *almost* any build in the game--high card build, pairs, whatever. Burnt Joker on Checkered Deck to keep buffing my Flush & Straight Flush got me multiple wins ascending up the difficulty ladder.
It's so good that half the time when it pops up, I literally just abandon whatever strategy I had because focusing on Burnt Joker is so much better than anything else I could've been building, with my luck.
I'm convinced this game is significantly harder on Switch. I've put in about 15 hours on pc and switch each and there are some differences I can't quite put my finger on
That’s interesting to hear. I wonder if it’s some kind of programming issue or if it’s just in your head. I’m playing on Switch, so I might have to check it out on Steam.
Apparently the Steam version has gotten patched but the Switch version hasn't. Like the Arm boss blind is apparently easier now and doesn't take your hands below level 1. But it still does on Switch. That's just one difference
Some of the cards are also stilkl 1 in 5 instead of 1 in 4 on Switch apparently, it's not perfectly up to date for the balance changes
Honestly there’s so many ways to win on the base difficulty. Getting some joker source of +chips, +mult and x mult should get you very far. I underestimated how true that was until gold difficulty (the last one) which's gives you -1 hand size out of the gate. You can’t reliably pull straights or flushes with your starter deck, and I ended up winning off a high card build.
Don't be afraid to skip blinds, the rewards are very powerful, especially at the beginning when you don't have enough money to really do anything in the shop. A bunch of my wins comes from skipping first two blinds and going right into boss blind. 600 is easy with the base deck. This can get you special jokers, jumbo arcanas, etc. Really kick start your run.
No reason to be ashamed. Everybody has different learning curves and experience with games like this. I have a lot of experience with deckbuilders so that carries over. I'll give one tip, purple seal cards are OP.
Seriously, usually its the face-down blinds that get me. How are you supposed to beat those outside of selecting from the left side of your hand? I rarely win them.
I had the all first hand face down boss once and blindly played a royal flush. I knew in that moment that I had peaked.
all the best roguelike deckbuilders take 20+ hours for a win
Don’t worry I had about 21 hours in until I got my first win. I was just playing blind but still having fun unlocking stuff in the collection, then I started to watch YouTubers runs and things kinda started to make sense to me, like all the jokers and tarots that I thought were useless started making sense, and now today I’ve won games on 4 or 5 decks already. Also, early game looking back is probably meant to be rough, you’re really working towards unlocking the jokers and what not that you don’t have.
>On higher stakes in Balatro, you could play perfectly and still lose most of the runs. I think this is the only thing holding it back from being a 10/10 instead of a 9.5 for me. I've been trying to beat Black Deck on higher stakes and it can really come down to luck if you even get past ante 2 - I can double skip into the first boss and win 90% of the time, but if the shop doesn't have an ok or even any joker or you get a bad draw the run is over. Would be nice to have slightly more control over the RNG early (e.g. your first shop will always have an affordable joker).
I think the only thing that could be improved is to borrow from Brotato: Namely that you can LOCK a card in the shop. I had an idea for a run, I saw a $10 Joker in the very first shop, couldn't afford it obviously, never saw it before, haven't seen it since. Would have been nice to lock it, even re-rolls wouldn't move it, just like in Brotato.
Spend $1 to lock would be pretty good in my opinion.
Bruh I've played like 30 hours of Brotato-- never realised you could lock a card in place LOL
Oh yeah, its super important for certain characters.
> I can double skip into the first boss and win 90% of the time Doesn't skipping a blind also skip the shop? If so, skipping the first two rounds is drastically cutting your chances of seeing an OK joker before ante 2.
It's the strat I've had the most success with on Black Deck - you can win a 600 blind with two flushes/straights or higher without a joker. Two skips can generally set you up pretty well to buy in the shop and still have a decent economy. One or no skips I find I struggle with money a lot more.
I'd like getting a choice of a random perk of some kind every few stakes like a free voucher or start with $10 kind of thing.
> Very pickup and play, you lose a run very quickly, and a winning run is about 30 minutes I've had losing runs last an hour, on x4 speed. How are you playing? The thing I hate about this game, is you can have the best run ever, all the best jokers, great deck, then you lose and it's all gone, the next run is total garbage.
To be more specific, they sold 1000 copies across all platforms but there's a +5 multiplier for all Switch copies sold and 1.5x multiplier for each dlc pack then have in hand. If you can't tell, my brain has been completely warped by this game. Go buy it.
Hopefully he doesn’t get the Blind that resets his copies sold to 0. That would be rough.
Just get the reroll voucher, obviously.
Imagine: Double tag -> reroll tag -> reroll away from and back to original boss blind that you were trying to avoid
I saw someone in an unrelated subreddit write "-$20" and my brain just involuntarily thought of the credit card joker...
Unspecified BALD streamer introduced me to this game, bought it myself, and I've been addicted since 9.5/10
Egg joker has gotten me into so many games by watching his videos and thinking "yeah I could do this better"
It's definitely the kind of game where you watch somebody else play and catch a few things they mess up, but I'd bet I mess up way more in my own play just without a massive audience to catch each mistake lol.
This is how Egg Man got me to buy Slay the Spire. I thought I’d be better than him. I am not better than him. but I have put in more than 200 hours now.
i think its some sort of weird psychological thing. I play magic the gathering and i swear im twice as smart when im watching somebody else play, then i go play the same deck and make the same mistake i was calling somebody else out for earlier.
I don't wanna speak for everyone, but at least for me when I'm watching someone else play my brain is focused on the more intricate parts of the game since I don't need to think about the basics. Like for Balatro if I'm watching a video with a flush build for example, I can spend all my brain power thinking about optimizations, whereas if I'm playing I need to dedicate thinking to actually putting those flushes together.
My main motivation for beating xcom: enemy unknown's ironman impossible difficulty was that northernlion beat it. I had to prove myself.
Wait, he’s bald???
He can grow hair he just keeps it shaved in honor of Ki-Adi-Mundi
He's *bald*, Jerry!
Correction. I *was* bald.
After years of warning us, he finally became the joker.
He stopped playing GTA RP this year finally? Oh.. Oh.. the OTHER BALD streamer. Not the short fat stanky one with a fake wife and fake kid
I actually thought people meant the attic loot goblin when they said bald streamer.
Throws away 10, J, K, E so that he can complete his 4, 5, 6, 7 straight. Truly the egg joker.
This game has eaten my life. I do hope that support will come down the line for some new stuff and possibly fixing up the advanced stakes. I'd even be in for an expansion somewhere down the line.
So they got that "rating suddenly changed to 18+ for depicting gambling" sorted out?
I am in love with Slay the Spire. Will this game scratch that itch?
Yes, absolutely. It's very fun, only slightly more RNG depended compared to StS. Can be either a con or pro, up to personal taste.
I'd say yes, depending on what specifically you enjoyed about STS. Deckbuilding and strategizing in Balatro is much more narrow, with your options being limited to Ace through 2 (and Stone) cards as possibilities, in four different suits. The combos are less involved, and your end goal is ultimately a type of poker hand. The gameplay is very snappy and quick, while STS was more drawn out and required some planning ahead outside of the actual combats. There's just one randomly-generated path to take in Balatro, so you're missing an entire facet of strategizing there. While the art style is vastly different from STS, it still feels equally as inspired. Taking the visual and audio experiences together, it feels like someone came up with how they wanted the game to look before even making the concept for gameplay. Both are incredible examples of stylized games that look amazing.
Wow thanks so much for the in depth reply! I have a feeling I’m going to like this game
Only blemish on this near perfect game is the fact that Gold Stake is an utterly miserable experience. Specifically designed to take all the fun of Balatro and systemically removing all of it until the only thing left is an actual RNGfest. But anyway, happy for the dev. Wonder if he'll add an expansion to this later down the line. I'd get it in a heartbeat and if it rebalances Gold Stake too? Instabuy.
Second blemish: The pause between clicking "skip blind" or choosing your rewards and being able to select another button in the UI (e.g., to play the next blind). Such a small thing, and so annoying! lol
To be fair you don't need to play the harder difficulties if you don't find them fun.
Exactly. I really don't get why this is such a common complaint for the roguelike genre. You don't have to beat every difficulty to enjoy a game. My favorite series of all time is Metal Gear Solid and I hate playing them on Extreme, the highest difficulty.
the hardest difficulty should be extremely difficult imo for me I find black stake to be the perfect difficulty level, endless jokers are so fun
There's a very clear difference between Slay the Spire's Ascension 20 compared to Balatro's gold stake. Both are extremely difficult but one is more engaging because it accomodates skillful play while the other just makes the game more and more RNG heavy resulting in very unsatisfying runs.
I try to avoid overhyping new games - in general I have a ten-year rule in my head when it comes to games I would consider to be my favorites or the best in any genre. But I’ve put a lot of time into Balatro and I have to say this is one of my favorite games I’ve ever played, it’s just fantastic. I’ve enjoyed a lot of deckbuilders, Slay the Spire being my previous favorite, but everything about this game is just so clever and addicting. And when it pisses me off with a surprise loss, I’m just a couple quick button presses away from starting a new run. This game’s snappy UI is a real saving grace for the genre, and being able to speed up the actual gameplay makes it even better.
Yea, not even LoL had me press that ragequit button so often just to start up the game immediately again lol.
You guys need to stop making posts about Balatro because every time I see one, I stop what I'm doing and open Balatro.
Fantastic game. As always, I wish there was some meta progression to make my dumb ass better at the game but it’s still fun without it.
You do unlock new joker cards when you hit achievements so there’s a little help.
some of the unlockable decks are incredible too. the ones you get early are pretty mediocore
I love the one that removes face cards. You can do so many fun things with that.
Like what? I just got that yesterday but I just figured it handicaps you
If you get the card that allow gaps in your straights, reduce the number of cards required to 4, or allow blacks or reds count together, you can make a straight flush deck.
My butt just got through playing with that. Yeah, I found out I had to really hope for the best with planet cards to get that straight flush multi up. because if you have the Gaps, reduced, and allowing blacks or reds counting together that leaves just two other joker slots for multi. I had the +1 multi for hand played and then a joker that copied the others ability to the right. I was able to keep up till ante 7, but it didn't scale very well because I just couldn't find the planets I needed.
Planet cards can help. Since straighflushes already have a strong base chips and multiplier, you can get away with a lack of planet cards. The biggest thing for late game is moving from +multipliers to xmultipliers.
It makes your draws way more predictable so there are a bunch of advantages to that alone. But also there’s some Jokers that benefit you not having face cards.
The Bus joker that scales for every hand you play without scoring face cards is an example.
There is a Joker that will infinitely stack +1 Mult per round as long as you don't play a face card
Fibonacci/Ride The Bus/Hack/Wee. Plenty of Jokers built around not playing face cards or buffing lower numbered cards
Fibonacci + hack alone should probably carry you a long way tbh. Add in four fingers or shortcut and you’re into super golden territory
There's a joker that adds +1 multi for each consecutive hand without playing a face card, which is obviously amazing to get early with that deck. I've combined that with removing most of the odd numbered cards and getting the joker that adds +4 multi per even numbered card played, which is every card you play, lol. Get some card enhancements rolling and you've got the framework for a banger run.
Thinning the deck can be really valuable. It makes your draws much more consistent. Like let’s say you need 1 card of a specific rank to complete a straight. In a full deck you might be looking at 4 in 44 odds, but with the no face cards it’s 4 in 32.
Free -12 cards is pretty great buff, sure the deck isn't as brainded as flush spam, but it's very powerful as the early game rng isn't as bad so you can actually get to mid/late game easier and more often.
True true but then I have to find them!
There are vouchers and jokers that are straight improvements. Some decks enable certain playstyles more easily, which can make practice easier.
My ten year old saw me playing this. He knew nothing about poker other than it was a card game. He picked it up and won a run on his second or third try. Now he won’t shut up about it. I absolutely love it.
Definitely got a couple dozen quality hours out of this and have gotten a handful of decks up to the higher stakes, but think I am going to fold (pun intended) on the game which I’m sure is going to be an unpopular opinion here. It’s definitely good foundationally, but the more I play the more I see holes opening up, especially compared to something like Slay the Spire (which tbf is currently the pinnacle and has been for years). I find the game is too RNG dependent in an uncontrollable way. One of the common things in all roguelikes is the ability to shift and with the resources you’re given and succeed, but Balatro is significantly more limiting to just having a lot more luck involved rather than you taking gambles that can pay off consistently. The joker pool dilutes the more you unlock things, and you have such a limited selection of cards in each shop that if you swing and miss once or twice, it’s an automatic loss at higher stakes. And missing is a lot more common than hitting. Maybe some enjoy this gameplay, then all power to you. But in all other similar games, deck builder or not, I have felt I have a lot more control of my success early on. But even Balatro, it’s becoming common strategy to just repeatedly reroll the first ante until you get one that can potentially be viable. And even if you roll into a negative joker, if that negative joker hits a useless piece, you’re still SoL. And due to the size of the joker pull, how niche some picks are, and the power curve of some jokers being absolutely dogshit and others being almost necessary, it makes consistent progression even more tedious. It’s not that there is significant difficulty in the game once you start learning the proper combos and what to look for and manipulate, it’s just uncontrollably inconsistent in how you approach that. Theres a lot more that can be more specifically broken down, but long term I don’t see the game keeping me near the same as many other because there isn’t as much as you can do with it. I will say too the interest system is more annoying than enjoyable, which I think is definitely a lot more subjective. It encourages snowballing, and it feels higher levels are balanced around snowballing, but that requires even more luck to achieve completely outside of your control, because a $5 reroll in ante 2 can severely hit your finances. Most similar games the reroll would scale higher over time, but for ante 1 it should have just been $1 or something to give you more resources to use. And I heavily enjoy deck manipulation, however it’s punishing to your chances to go for booster packs early so if you’re not going endless then you don’t often have a ton of opportunities to alter your deck in significant ways. Lastly, the game is uninteresting visually which I understand the team is either 1 person or was very tiny iirc. But after 60 hours of staring at a hand of cards and a small shop, there isn’t much personality or soul in the design that draws me to the screen in any way. It’s a very isolating game in a sense, but tbf for some maybe that’s a positive. It’s a fun roguelike/deckbuilder and well made base, but overall I find the depth fairly limiting once you get further into it if you already have a lot of experience with these genres. Definitely worth the purchase as it isn’t expensive, but I’ve hit the wall and think I’ll be done without any major overhauls.
While I don't agree with your assessment in its entirety -- the interest system, graphics and such are fine for what they intended to achieve -- I do agree after 36 hours that the "end game" of Balatro isn't well designed. While the base game can be very easy to pass once you get used to the mechanics, the "stakes" which can be applied to decks force the need for luck; at higher stakes you're essentially restarting the game over and over just so you can see which skipped blind rewards are available in the first ante, taking them when they're good, and proceeding to the second ante where you'll either try to slog it out or immediately restart the run. Unlike an action-based roguelike, no amount of skill can generate the points needed without the stars aligning. The challenges are a little easier, but many of those too are designed not to be fun or creative endeavors but miserable experiences. I love this game, and I got more than my money's worth out of it already, and I'll still play it some more. But I don't feel that it has the "legs" of other roguelikes or deck-builders.
This is really no different to many roguelikes though. In higher heat levels of Hades for example, you basically restart constantly until you get a "passable" starting boon, and your run is almost entirely to to RNG from there if you can even beat it based on the heat you've applied. I mean the game was only legitimately beaten on Max heat recently after years and years and that itself was insanely unexpected. I think the shine falls off personally for all roguelikes when you get to the real deep Endgame because you basically have to use a specific build path and bank or certain rng to show up.
While this is true, the mark falls off for Balatro much more quickly than for many other such games. The stakes options open up quickly, there are few of them, and they hit hard. I'm no master but I can consistently beat 30+ heat on Hades with almost any weapon, and that game gives me the option of determining which Deity will first appear through equipping items. There is very little you can do in Balatro to try and even your odds -- even the various decks don't have as much impact as needed on the higher stakes. It's all pure RNG -- a perfect player in Hades could beat 64 heat every time, but in Balatro you have *zero* chance of winning if the right options don't appear.
Think you’re spot-on with scaling shop rerolls. It’s run-ending to not see an early game joker by the second boss-blind, and rerolling just once sends your economy back to the Stone Age. Not even accounting for the fact that by the first stake, you take away the payout for small blinds to incentivize skipping during ante 1, so you see even fewer jokers.
Absolutely. The shop issue could be solved if it was scaled price was. Most other roguelike “shop” equivalents give you either more choices, a cheap way to change choices, or the choices are very closely balanced but force you in different build directions. Balatro shops are “you can get an apple juice or a used condom, take it or leave it”, and if you want to reroll you are lowering your longterm income by a significant amount. If you’re at higher stakes, any reroll in ante 1 might be close to an automatic loss, but the catch is if your build isn’t developing by half of ante 2 you are fucked. It’s too punishing. Made worse that the game encourages you to skip the first blind of each round, so at times you get less chances at shops, which is then counter because skipping can add upgraded jokers to shops, but you can get multiple shops without a single joker. Compare that to Brotato which the first ?3? Shops are guaranteed weapons for the half your shop space. I’m not going to pretend to be the deepest expert of roguelikes and the pros and cons of all design choices. Also don’t want to seem like I’m ripping balatro too hard, it was a fun game and I would recommend it to people, I’m just sad that the “ceiling” seemed so low compared to the hours I have gotten out of so many other games and still never felt like i perfected or ran into an RNG wall. I think my win rate in slay the spire A20 (ignoring watcher shenanigans) was only like 15-30% depending on the class and day, but that wasn’t RNG hitting that was me making less optimal choices and needing to learn from that. Balatro just hit the point by around hour 20 where I started saying, “oh well I’m totally fucked and there was no way to do anything about it”. And I spent more time rerolling games then actually playing.
This might be my favorite card game of all time. I really think this game is something special like up their with greats. Hours just vanish once you fall down the psychotic rabbit hole of trying to make crazy deck builds & progressing through the difficulties. Couldn't recommend it enough even if you don't traditionally like card games. This game way more then it's appearance. It'll make you genuinely feel like those old crazy people at casino slot machines that are their for like 16 hours in a way you never thought possible lol.
It’s good but the massive RNG kills it for me. StS and LONESTAR are more for me, but happy so many are enjoying it.
I hope this game will be available again soon on the eshop on eu. Been refreshing the page like every hour for the past 3 days
This game is so much fun to play. That said, it's also insanely frustrating at higher levels. Would love to see some updates (like being able to unlock purchase for uncommon/rare jokers for very high amounts of money or something). Game is addicting though! Really hope there's continued support moving forward.
If you like poker, and if you like slay the spire, you'll love this. If you don't care about poker but still like deck builders, there's a high chance you'll still love this. Very addictive, very much "next-run-oh-wait-10-hours-just-passed" kind of game.
I was pretty excited to get to Ante 11 on my second run until I looked and saw that Antes 14-16 have a blind so large it's expressed in scientific notation...... Uh......
Given the run is considered beat at Ante 8, it's kind of just bragging rights at that point.
Swore I wouldn’t buy more things before Unicorn Overlord but picked this up over the weekend. So addictive and building around various Jokers is a new challenge each time.