Balatro Review

There are games you play, and then there are games that occupy your thoughts while you're not playing them. Balatro is firmly in the second category — and has been since I downloaded it for what I assumed would be a quick thirty-minute session.

Six hours later, I looked up.

What Even Is Balatro?

Balatro describes itself as a "poker roguelike," which undersells it dramatically. You play poker hands to score points, trying to hit a target score across multiple rounds (antes) to progress. But the genius is in what sits on top of that foundation.

Jokers — up to five of which can be in play simultaneously — modify your scoring in increasingly absurd ways. One might triple the score of any heart. Another adds bonus chips for every card discarded during a run. Another turns all twos into wildcards. The combinations spiral outward into territory that feels less like card games and more like theoretical mathematics.

The moment you get your first "broken" build — the first time your score counter ticks into the millions — is something genuinely special. It feels like you've discovered a cheat code in reality.

Gameplay: A Loop That Never Gets Old

The core gameplay loop is deceptively simple: play hands, score points, buy upgrades from the shop, repeat. The depth reveals itself gradually. You start learning that certain joker combinations interact in unexpected ways. You discover the cursed cards — cards that give massive bonuses but carry debilitating penalties. You learn to read what the game is offering and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Each run takes roughly 45-90 minutes, long enough to feel substantial, short enough that "one more run" is always a genuine option rather than a commitment.

The difficulty scaling is thoughtful. Early antes are forgiving enough to teach the systems without babying you. By the later stages, you're either executing a well-constructed engine or you're dead.

Visual & Audio Design: Understated but Perfect

Balatro doesn't try to dazzle you with elaborate art. The card-table aesthetic is clean, functional, and oddly hypnotic — the way the cards animate, the satisfying clicks and flourishes as hands resolve, the warm amber glow of a late-night poker session.

The soundtrack is something special. A downbeat, slightly melancholy lo-fi score that perfectly captures the headspace of deep strategic focus. It's the kind of music you'd put on while working, and several tracks have made their way into my actual work playlist.

The Numbers Game: How Deep Does It Go?

There are 150+ Jokers, multiple deck types, modifiers for card suits, a voucher system that unlocks across runs, stake levels that add new challenge modifiers, and a seed system for sharing specific runs with others.

The content volume is staggering for a solo developer's debut commercial release. LocalThunk — who made this alone, in their spare time — has created something that major studios with hundreds of employees couldn't conceive of.

The Verdict

Balatro is that rare game that operates on multiple levels simultaneously. For casual players, it's a satisfying card game with accessible mechanics and an addictive loop. For systems-obsessives, it's a nearly inexhaustible puzzle with thousands of interacting variables to explore.

It is, in the most literal sense, impossible to put down until you've found your rhythm with it. Then it's impossible to put down because you've found your rhythm.

A genuine modern classic. One of the best games of the decade so far.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is Balatro worth buying? A: Absolutely — at £11.99 it's one of the best value-per-hour games of the past five years. Most players sink 50–100+ hours into it. The poker-roguelike formula combines instant accessibility with hundreds of hours of strategic depth. Available on PC, Switch, PS5, Xbox, and mobile, with identical content across platforms.

Q: Do I need to know poker to play Balatro? A: No — Balatro teaches you everything in the first few hands. Knowing standard poker hand rankings helps for the first hour, but the game's twists (Jokers, planet cards, modifiers) quickly take over. Within ten minutes most players are scoring hands that have nothing to do with conventional poker strategy.

Q: How does Balatro compare to Inscryption or Slay the Spire? A: Different beasts. Slay the Spire is the deck-builder template; Balatro is more focused — one core mechanic explored exhaustively. Inscryption is narrative-driven horror with card mechanics. Balatro has no story, just escalating mechanical complexity. If you loved any of these for the systems-puzzle satisfaction, you'll love the others.