Did you know Balatro is available on mobile now? I almost wish I still didn’t know, as for only a tenner (I love paying for full experience on mobile – that’s how you know it’s good) I can now play a game of Balatro any time, any place. Which would make a weaker man than me tremble, unable to resist going in for another round even in the middle of the… Anyway, it’s good, alright?
For the uninitiated, Balatro is a poker-themed roguelike that has you assembling poker hands to score points that can be then used to modify your deck to take on increasingly difficult score challenges until you bust. The genius is in how it plays with those simple expectations, the rules that many of us just know through learning card games at a young age, and allows you to really mess with them.
After all, a four of a kind is one of the top scoring poker hands for a reason. There’s only four suits in a standard deck, so you’d need all possible cards of a matching value to score it. Unless, of course, your deck was supercharged with something like eight aces (and some of them were painted up to earn you extra multiplier bonuses on top of that). Likewise, straight flushes are less about luck than strategy when you’ve converted as many suits as possible into hearts. It’s not just about the tricky hands, either. It’s just as valid a tactic to figure out ways to turn the humble high card or pair into actually being your top scoring hand, so it outstrips the likes of a full house.
House always wins?
It’s all about cheating the rules, and feeling sly as a fox while you do it. Much like how you could theoretically cheat your company of money by playing Balatro in the middle of the work day on your phone while you’re meant to be working. But that’s not something I would know anything about. I’m not even really sure what Balatro is. You want to check my phone? Ah, I’ve accidentally locked myself out of it and thrown it out of the window. I guess that data is simply lost now.
You’re rewarded for winning matches with money – which, much like in real life while you may or may not be working, can be used to buy more cards. A rotating storefront between rounds offers more than just more playing cards, but also Balatro Joker cards (used to introduce permanent rule changes), tarot and spectral cards (which usually modify cards in your deck), and planet cards (which level up each scoring hand). There are limits. Playing cards, for example, can only receive one upgrade and one stamp upgrade at a time. Likewise, for the most part, you can only have five jokers in play at a time. Having those individual Jokers boosting lone aspects of your score will only get you so far as the “blinds” you’re trying to beat the score of increase on a curve, so you need to get them to work together if you want to keep up.
The Baron Joker, for instance, gives a 1.5x multiplier for every King in your hand once you’ve played a hand. So what happens when you not only stuff your deck with extra Kings, but use the Mime Joker to retrigger the effect a second time, and the Reserved Parking Joker to generate extra money for face cards on top of that? Or if you combine the Half Joker that gives a +20 multiplier if your hand contains three or less cards with The Trio Joker and the Wily Joker to supercharge it with even more multiplication and extra chips when scoring a three-of-a-kind? You’ve got to be able to sit back, and let them get on with the job for you. Balatro, that is. Not anyone else.
Play on, joker diamond
“If you were playing it during a meeting, I’d recommend either turning down the sound or triple-checking you’re on mute.”
While there are definitely optimal ways to play, and ways to nudge those possibilities into existence by knowing which blinds to skip for bonus rewards and the like, there’s always so many opportunities to pivot that you’re always constantly tempted to retool your strategy. Chasing new ideas as you stumble upon new cogs for your great big scoring machine is all part of the fun.
Balatro knows it, the wonderful sound design binging along with each extra bit of score as it tallies up a played hand, like watching slot machine wheels spin (without the gambling of course – it’s only a theming here, Balatro has little to do with actual gambling mechanics). Though if you were playing it during a meeting, I’d recommend either turning down the sound or triple-checking you’re on mute. In our last meeting, that definitely wasn’t coming from me. Someone else was playing Balatro.
The only downside to Balatro mobile is that there’s no cross-save, meaning if you’ve already put a substantial amount of hours into it via other platforms (um, guilty), you’ll need to chase those high scores again as you unlock heaps of new cards and decks, and tick off challenge runs. Though in my case, I’m finding it quite fun to earn them all over again. The core of Balatro is so fun that unlocks or not, I’m always having a good time. Extra cards are just a bonus. After all, even Balatro’s creator has had trouble 100% completing the game.
It helps that Balatro feels right at home on a touch screen. Naturally, you just tap to select the cards in your hand you want to either play or discard, and then do so. Likewise in the store between rounds you just select what you want to buy and either drag it to the top or the side of the screen depending on if you want to activate it right away or put it in storage. It just works. So well.
I can see my playtime in Balatro mobile rapidly increasing whenever I dare to look at my app usage, and if it keeps going at this rate it’ll be breathing down the neck of the time I already put in on console. Just don’t ask me to tell you what that number is. Or when I play. There’s not a Joker on Earth that’d get me to admit to it, and I’m not going to try to play the hand that feeds. In the words of Jimbo the Joker: “Oh no, were you bluffing too?”
Looking for more? We’ve got the best roguelike games to lose yourself in. Or more on the go? Then our list of the best Android games is here to help too!