I love Balatro. Its simple design hides a marvelous group of systems and ideas that are intricately intertwined and work in perfect tandem. You can play for 50 hours and still discover new Jokers, rules, combinations, and ways to earn millions of points with a single hand. Balatro is one of my favorite games of last year, and I strongly believe it stands as one of the best of the current decade.
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I Downloaded Mobile Balatro And Instantly Regretted It
Balatro is one of my favourite games this year, but it’s dangerous on mobile.
I used to hate Balatro. When I started playing it last September, I didn’t get it. I played it for a couple of days, didn’t get far, and thought it wasn’t my thing. Then on the third day, when I checked the time, I had been playing nonstop for four hours.
Losing Myself In Jimbo’s Smile
This was lovely for the first week — I finally understood why my colleagues told me that I should give this game a chance, knowing that I have a strong affection for roguelites and card games. I slowly discovered the best Jokers, how they had synergised with my cards, and when was the best time to choose a Tarot card before a Planet booster. Finally, I started seeing the ones and zeros light up my eyes.
But this quickly became an issue: every time I sat down to play, I’d play for hours. I had a big list of titles I wanted to try, not including what I had to play for work, but Balatro forced me to put everything else on hold. Movies and TV shows? Pass. Books? Please, don’t make Jimbo laugh.
The situation escalated to the point where one night I saw how many hours I had registered in less than a month (a number I won’t share). I stared at my screen, completely dumbfounded, and decided to uninstall Balatro. “That’s it,” I thought.
It was a three-digit number.
Falling Into Balatro’s Temptation Again
I managed to regain control of my gaming life until January 2025. After the New Year’s celebration, was I ready to embark on a big JRPG (Metaphor: ReFantazio had all the numbers) or start checking out some of the shorter gems that I missed from 2024? I opened Game Pass and there it was: that smile. That damn smile. I saw Jimbo’s face and decided to play a game or two, in memory of the good old days.
As you might have guessed by now, the first session was long. I played some runs with a few decks I hadn’t used much before, and a few hours passed. I was having a good time and I didn’t have much else going on, so I didn’t think too hard about it. But an insidious thought emerged: is this gonna be a thing again?
The next day, I decided to try to be smart about it. When I was in university, I didn’t have much time to play games during the week — sometimes, there was no time at all between work and studies — so I used to set an alarm for between thirty minutes and half an hour whenever I sat down. The only flexible rule was that I could add extra minutes if I needed to find a save spot — God bless the auto-save feature.
How To See Balatro With Other Eyes
Believe it or not, this worked. In fact, it made me play much better. Since I always had a limited number of runs, I always tried to make the best out of them. I quickly started noticing which hands were the most likely to occur depending on the deck I was playing, and with almost every Joker unlocked, I knew exactly which ones I should chase to make it far. Sometimes, if I played a few runs and saw that I wasn’t getting anything of value, I’d simply start over and begin searching again.
I was able to follow this routine for a couple of weeks, without leaving any of my other interests behind, and it felt good. I completed runs with every deck, something I haven’t done before, and I unlocked all the fascinating challenges that give you unique (and sometimes absurd) rules.
After some sessions, I eventually came to another realization about Balatro. It’s not really a game about luck, even if that plays a major role in it and one bad hand or inconvenient Boss Bind can ruin your entire run. The thing is, Balatro is about what you can do with what you have. It rewards your knowledge and memory about how everything works and what cards you can receive, and when you see the game that way, you’ll reach Endless Mode much faster with basically any deck you use.
I’m glad I gave Balatro, and myself, another chance. Not only I found a healthier way of playing it, but I discovered other layers about its design that made me love it even more than I did last year. For a game that was frequently labeled as ‘addictive’ by players and colleagues, it was a relief to find another way of interacting with it.
Strategy
Digital Card Game
Roguelike
- Released
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February 20, 2024
- ESRB
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E For Everyone
- Developer(s)
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LocalThunk
- Publisher(s)
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Playstack
- Genres
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