Balatro might be the second best game that I’ve played this year. Balatro (mobile) is the best game I’ve played this year. At this point, I think I’ve already played more Balatro on my phone than on my PC and Steam Deck combined. That’s ten months of playtime versus one. I know I’ve got a problem, but it’s an enjoyable problem to have.
Every time I feel the need to use the toilet, I take Balatro with me. Commuting? Balatro. Five minutes between interviews during a busy junket? You guessed it, Balatro. While I’ve grown to love my Steam Deck, it’s a bulky beast. I can’t take it everywhere. My phone, on the other hand, is more than capable of running a pixelated poker roguelike and fits perfectly in my pocket.
However, the experience is different when playing on your phone. I’ve noticed different things, tried different strategies, and come to love different jokers. It’s just a new perspective on things that has changed my approach to a game I thought I knew.
On PC, I was a Flush crutch. I know it doesn’t scale particularly well, but I was focused on winning gold stake rather than getting the highest score on endless mode, and it’s perfect for that. Since moving to mobile, I’ve been more flexible in my approach, pivoting my strategy depending on what jokers and cards I’m dealt. I’ve had good runs with three of a kind, pair, or even high card.
Of course, none of this is because I’m playing on mobile. But mobile has allowed me to play more often. If I hadn’t bought that second copy of the game, I wouldn’t have half the hours – and therefore half the experience – that I do now. Balatro mobile has revolutionised my gameplay by nature of being more accessible more of the time, and the latest evolution has been the Erratic Deck.
Balatro’s Erratic Deck
Balatro’s Erratic deck adds one weird rule to the game: your deck is completely randomised. You could end up with 17 Kings. You could end up with six 2s. Or you could, feasibly, end up with the regular 52 cards as normal. That hasn’t happened to me yet, though.
This effect is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that you might get a run with a dozen Kings and breeze through with Five of a Kind every round. The curse is that it adds a whole new level of roguelike to the roguelike. It goes like this:
I jump into a run with the Erratic deck. I check the deck itself. If there are no apparent combos (ten or more of a single card, 20 or more of a single suit), I start a new run. I check the deck. If there are no apparent combos, I start a new run. Eventually I’ll find the perfect deck and run through as many antes as I can manage. When I inevitably lose, I’ll start the process all over again.
Balatro’s Erratic deck adds a whole other game within the game. I’ve become obsessed with optimising my deck before I even play a hand. Last night I spent nearly an hour resetting before I found a deck I wanted to play. My five of a kind 9s run went superbly well after that, but in what world is it normal to spend so long perfecting the game state before even starting to play? The last time I did such a thing was when I soft reset Pokemon SoulSilver to try to get a shiny Cyndaquil to play a shiny-only Nuzlocke with.
I lost in Ante 5, by the way.
For whatever reason, I mostly ignored the Erratic deck in my PC playthrough. The randomness of the deck itself probably put me off. I nearly saved myself. But now I have degenerated further than ever before.
Balatro continues to amaze me. The depth of this game never fails to impress, and there are very few games that still surprise me after over a hundred hours of playtime. Even fewer of those were made by one person. Balatro’s Erratic deck has destroyed me, pushed me further into this hole that I’ve inhabited all year. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
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Balatro, I’m Sorry For Ever Doubting You
It took an entire year, but Balatro has finally cast a spell on me.