You may have noticed Balatro in a few of TheGamer’s Game of the Year lists, as I know plenty of editors have been obsessing over Flushes and Full Houses since the game was released in February. It’s had a hold on me for the past ten months, and that hold has tightened to a choke since it was ported to mobile.
At the time of writing, I don’t know if the plucky indie that could managed to pick up enough points to take home the coveted TheGamer Game of the Year trophy. If it did: congratulations LocalThunk! You did it! If it didn’t: unlucky, mate. 1000xResist was a banger though, you have to admit. If something else won, you were robbed. It’s a fix.
If you don’t understand our GOTY voting system, it’s simple. Every editor picks their ten best games. Tenth gets one point, first gets ten points. Tally them up across the site et voila, a completely democratic Game of the Year list that reflects the site as a whole, not just the loudest voices.
Relearning How To Play Balatro
Balatro is full of surprises – the crossovers, for one. Who’d have thought that CD Projekt Red would allow Geralt & co. to appear in a tiny solo project? And then who’d have thought they’d read my article suggesting they put Balatro in Cyberpunk 2077 and actually go and do it? Not me, that’s for sure.
More than that, Balatro keeps surprising me from a gameplay perspective. I still haven’t unlocked all the Jokers on mobile – some have difficult unlock requirements and others just haven’t turned up – so there’s plenty more to discover in that department. Each deck keeps you on your toes, and each run is sufficiently different. Every round is a new puzzle to solve, every ante a new challenge to overcome.
I started Balatro running Flushes. They’re relatively easy to make, score pretty well, and scale well enough for white stake. But when you crank up the difficulty, those planets start feeling less useful and even with the Chequered Deck, those Flushes become a little lacklustre.
So I moved onto Four of a Kind. This is more tricky to pull off, but with a good roll on the Erratic Deck and some kind RNG from the Ouija spectral card you can really make it work. My best run was with all Queens, mostly steel cards, and I cleared eight antes with ease.
In Balatro, Less Is More
However, I heard rumour of another tactic. Instead of heading further up the scale, I headed back down. Top players swear by Pair runs, or even focus on High Card. That way, you nearly always draw your best hand. That felt a little too spicy for me, so I started with three of a kind.
It was Half Joker that originally forced my hand. 20 Mult if your hand is three or fewer cards? The early antes were a breeze. But then I found The Duo, which offers 2x Mult if your hand includes a Pair. This triggers on three of a kind, but I was struggling to pull the right cards, especially as I hadn’t manipulated my deck at all yet. So I made the move to Pairs.
The Pairs did fly. I was aided by some very generous RNG, picking up Photograph, Burnt Joker, and Brainstorm. I had nothing to add chips, so I relied on arcana to boost the chips my cards gave. Suddenly, I had the makings of a Pair run.
Obviously I had a lot of luck on this run, as some great Jokers turned out for me, but the scaling of Pairs is phenomenal. They were up at level 25 for me by Ante 8 – thanks largely to Brainstormed Burnt Joker – and it didn’t matter what cards I played. Whether a King or a 2, the resulting score would be in the hundreds of thousands. And the results speak for themselves.
I’m a Pair convert. I’m going to play Pairs for the rest of my days, I’m going to scale higher and Joker better. That is, until I get confident enough to try a High Card run.
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Balatro Developer Calls Out PEGI Over 18+ Rating
LocalThunk calls out PEGI for giving Balatro an 18+ rating, while games with loot boxes are rated 3+.