Balatro is the antethical to everything I've held dear to the medium in recent times: a near-completely artistically stripped down experience devoid of story, made to be repeated in perpetuity. Even the brightest jewels of the roguelike genre—Hades and Inscryption—I cherish largely in spite of their nature as roguelikes. Yet, after spending six hours playing through on release day, I was already hooked in deeply, just to have it embed deeper and deeper into my soul with every game.
There's an inherent trance that every run builds up, setting up the perfect hand with discards before firing off an insane chain reaction of multipliers. So many variables at play that it's pointless to crunch beyond a rough estimate, leaving each hand as something of it's own gamble. Sometimes that leaves you short of a win by only a fraction of the point threshold to hit, but sometimes that hand you thought would net you a few hundred thousand ticks all the way up to 20 million. This has happened to me on multiple occasions! And it's a glorious, visceral experience each and every time.
The biggest strength with Balatro, I feel, is the ease and variety of ways in which it feels like the game can be snapped in two. I have already beaten 7 or 8 runs of the game, more than any other roguelike I've played besides maybe Enter the Gungeon (which I dumped 100 hours into during high school), and am thirsting to do even more. From my experience, most other roguelikes make winning a run a far scarcer experience in order to help perpetuate the gameplay loop. But as it turns out, winning is really fun.
Not only that, every single winning run takes a completely separate angle to win: totally different Joker cards, deck compositions, and hands I aim for. It's so easy to feel like I've found the stupidest possible way to win the run, just to come around to the end 2-3 runs later with something far stupider. And even after each winning run, I feel inclined to continue in the endless mode, where the point thresholds start going up exponentially just to see how far the utter stupidity can take me. Many runs end up becoming less about whether or not I can win with my setup, but rather the far more interesting question of how far towards infinity I can reach with it. I'm prematurely a bit excited for the run I eventually get on that lets me pass my current wall, the 300 million point threshold.
It's pretty impressive how Balatro really just... doesn't have any issues. Thanks to being so stripped down, it manages to be absolutely airtight in its design while providing a cornucopia of variety. It's just an absolute masterpiece of design. A welcome surprise for personal game of the year contender.
There's an inherent trance that every run builds up, setting up the perfect hand with discards before firing off an insane chain reaction of multipliers. So many variables at play that it's pointless to crunch beyond a rough estimate, leaving each hand as something of it's own gamble. Sometimes that leaves you short of a win by only a fraction of the point threshold to hit, but sometimes that hand you thought would net you a few hundred thousand ticks all the way up to 20 million. This has happened to me on multiple occasions! And it's a glorious, visceral experience each and every time.
The biggest strength with Balatro, I feel, is the ease and variety of ways in which it feels like the game can be snapped in two. I have already beaten 7 or 8 runs of the game, more than any other roguelike I've played besides maybe Enter the Gungeon (which I dumped 100 hours into during high school), and am thirsting to do even more. From my experience, most other roguelikes make winning a run a far scarcer experience in order to help perpetuate the gameplay loop. But as it turns out, winning is really fun.
Not only that, every single winning run takes a completely separate angle to win: totally different Joker cards, deck compositions, and hands I aim for. It's so easy to feel like I've found the stupidest possible way to win the run, just to come around to the end 2-3 runs later with something far stupider. And even after each winning run, I feel inclined to continue in the endless mode, where the point thresholds start going up exponentially just to see how far the utter stupidity can take me. Many runs end up becoming less about whether or not I can win with my setup, but rather the far more interesting question of how far towards infinity I can reach with it. I'm prematurely a bit excited for the run I eventually get on that lets me pass my current wall, the 300 million point threshold.
It's pretty impressive how Balatro really just... doesn't have any issues. Thanks to being so stripped down, it manages to be absolutely airtight in its design while providing a cornucopia of variety. It's just an absolute masterpiece of design. A welcome surprise for personal game of the year contender.