Board 8 > Balatro releases today [roguelike] [card game] [amazing]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Balatro releases today for $15 on steam and consoles. one of my most anticipated games of the year

Its a poker roguelike and extremely addictive (i put 30+ hours into the demo in January). the full game will be absolutely jam packed with content.

currently, the game is averaging 94/100 from critic reviews

https://opencritic.com/game/16300/balatro

dammit I wish I had know about this for fantasy

Interesting. How do you make poker a scaling deck builder?

the basics of the game is that you have 4 hands and 3 discards each round to reach a (scaling) target score. Each poker hand has a base (chips) x (multiplier) score based on the quality of the hand. Every card you play adds chips based on the number of the card (face cards count as 10 like in blackjack).

to improve this, you earn economy after each round and can buy things from the store to improve your deck. The core mechanic here is buying joker cards, which fundamentally change something about how your deck works. For example, some joker cards add multiplier for every heart you play in a hand. Some give you multiplicative multiplier. And the order of the jokers matters (so youll want to add all your multiplier before you multiply it).

you can also improve your deck with tarot and spectral cards, which can change / remove / add cards to your deck (or to your jokers). So you can end up with like 12 kings in your deck and make 5 of a kind hands possible.

its really innovative and extremely fun and addicting

That sounds great, I'm in

update: its actually $13.49 for the next few days!

even more of a steal!

I play a ton of roguelike deckbuilders and I can confirm this is a good 'un. I regret not buying it on the Switch.

I found this by searching amazing in the b8 search. I'm always looking for something amazing so you knew exactly how to find me.

I have never heard of this game and I will probably be buying this game today.

yeah this looks like the perfect steam deck game

i'm in for 13 bucks

Zigzagoon posted...

I found this by searching amazing in the b8 search. I'm always looking for something amazing so you knew exactly how to find me.

I honestly cant tell if this is joking but yes i did use [amazing] as a tag to get the people excited

Balatro is awesome. I played the demo runs to the max playing rounds allowed each time and watched NorthernLion play a ton. Just a wonderful game all around.

this game is incredible

I played it for a bit. It's decent. Kinda surprised it's taking off so much but I guess Poker is a really easy game to hook people in with.

Played a bunch of the demo, will absolutely be picking up the full game. It's basically a perfect deck building roguelike - I was really blown away by how it was simultaneously super relaxing and replayable while also giving you so many ways to ball completely out of control with totally ludicrous builds.

I saw this thread then I saw this on Twitter

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1759957364822700201

This game is indeed a lot of fun but I did win my first run immediately after the 1st tutorial run. Not sure if I got lucky or if this game is easy but I'm sure it has ramping difficulty modes like all deckbuilders.

I literally 1 shot the final boss with 112,000 points on the first hand.

with poker its naturally easier to think about whether my build is strong against what you would expect based on relative hand strength

like at floor 1, if you get a mid straight, youre good

so you know youre going to have to outscale that

its very satisfying

that said I lost to the heart

Got my first win on I think my fifth attempt. I entered Endless Mode and got over 1,000,000 chips in one hand on the next boss. I think I beat the next one after that, but then the requirements ramp up insanely high on ante 11. I saw someone reach ante 12 and its even more ridiculous, like 300,000,000

skullbone posted...

This game is indeed a lot of fun but I did win my first run immediately after the 1st tutorial run. Not sure if I got lucky or if this game is easy but I'm sure it has ramping difficulty modes like all deckbuilders.

I literally 1 shot the final boss with 112,000 points on the first hand.

there's 15 different starting decks and 8 different difficulty levels for each (stakes)!

and you can always try to take your run into endless mode through ante 16 (i haven't seen anyone get past 12 yet)

Kinda wish this was on phones, hmmm.

I'll need for think about which platform to check it out on.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Kinda wish this was on phones, hmmm.

I'll need for think about which platform to check it out on.

supposedly a mobile version is in development, but there's not been a release date announced for that version yet, to my knowledge

Fucked my sleep up tonight because I fell into "just one more hand" and couldn't tear away. Game is really damn good.

Xiahou_Shake posted...

Fucked my sleep up tonight because I fell into "just one more hand" and couldn't tear away. Game is really damn good.

samesies

my first run was by far my most successful

some of these boss chip restrictions are tough

also in case anyone was wondering

this is like the perfect steam deck game

i have found my couch and chill game

Zigzagoon posted...

I found this by searching amazing in the b8 search. I'm always looking for something amazing so you knew exactly how to find me.

i actually have a google alert for [amazing] on b8 topics i got an email about this topic as soon as it was posted

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/463f1d72.jpg

Ante 12 is just a ridiculous jump lol

hmmm i am not very good at this game

i've lost to the last boss twice now

How does this game compare to Slay the Spire? I dont do a ton of deck builders but I enjoyed that one.

In my opinion it's not really that similar to Slay the Spire, I dunno how to compare the two.

won my first run last night

but I feel like the voucher to reroll boss debuffs is a necessity

Yeah some of the boss debuffs are a little too strong like the one that permanently downgrades any hand types you use.

So if you have a rank 4 flush and you play a flush during that boss then it permanently gets downgraded to 3 and so on.

Also the extra big blind boss and the 1 hand bosses can be killers depending on when you get them. The 1 hand boss should transform of your other hands into discards or something so you can try to have a better chance.

Yeah I fought that boss and thought "oh that's a cool idea, forces you to use different hand types if you can't beat it quickly

....wait why are they still downgraded after" and now loathe that debuff

Yeah and there's already another boss that only lets you score each hand type once I believe so I don't get the strategy design behind the debuff boss.

also I never would have figured this out if I hadn't had to cook and almost never stop a run midstream in any deck builder but you unlock a joker for continuing a run

After you beat a run you can also continue to try to get to Ante 12 and 16 but the numbers start going crazy.

Something else that I figured out early that isn't obvious is that you can rearrange your jokers and how cards are scored during a hand. It does tell you early that everything scores left to right but I didn't put it together that I need to put my multiplier jokers at the end of the chain.

Or if you have a straight you can rearrange to put your high card on the left if you have a joker that doubles your first card in a hand or something like that.

i believe the one hand boss has a lower target score which is supposed to balance it out, though its heavily build dependent!

and joker order is one of the most important things to maximizing your score! though most of the time its relatively straightforward (+mult on the left, xmult on the right)

FFDragon posted...

also I never would have figured this out if I hadn't had to cook and almost never stop a run midstream in any deck builder but you unlock a joker for continuing a run

you can see unlock criteria in the collection! (some of them are pretty ridiculous)

i've won twice now

two pair is OP

excited to see what the higher "stakes" do

having those unlock per-deck seems a little extreme with so many decks, but i guess there's always the unlock all button

This game is fun, but the sound effects remind me so strongly of Inscryption that it makes me want to stop and go replay Inscryption instead.

Fun one here, scored about 9000 and got $40 or so
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b9ff33b5.jpg

Immediately destroyed that hand
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/18ac8a80.png

foolm0r0n posted...

Fun one here, scored about 9000 and got $40 or so
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/b9ff33b5.jpg

dont forget to move your tarot card joker (i forget what its called, the purple one on the far right) to the left of the one next to it! That one is multiplicative!

Lost on boss 10

Pretty fun but like Slay the Spire I'm not sure if it can really grab me for more than a few runs

I played a few hours, really enjoy it.

I think i've gotten to ante 11 on 3 different runs but man i don't know how you get past it. I think you have to get 2 of the infinitely scaling jokers super early if I had to guess.

I do find this game a little start dependent though, like if i have bad shop choices after the first two fights i might as well restart (depending on starting deck)

i thought i was complete "over" roguelikes, but yeah this one rules.

both my runs have gotten to around 7/8 ante and fizzled out, think I need to take some bigger risks to swap out some jokers around that point.

also both runs depended on that red opaque joker card, where you simply keep buying packs and skipping them.

Won with red and blue decks, so now its time for the weirder stuff

I didnt personally witness it but I saw someones high score where they actually reached Ante 13

I was watching jon blow stream this and realized I misinterpreted "X1.5 mult" and "X2" mult. I thought that was just another way to say "+2 mult". this game's gonna be easy now.

also I feel like this is an "engine builder" not a "deckbuilder". deckbuilder means something more specific to me.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e8467c55.jpg

still couldn't beat ante 12 with this lol

woohoo! finally beat ante 12 with this awesome synergy (midas mask turns all face cards into gold cards, vampire instantly turns them back into regular cards and gains x0.2 mult. By the end I had x40 mult on vampire, and copied it with blueprint).

47 billion to open the small blind on ante 13 is crazy though

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/18981378.jpg