Current Events > Bought and beat Balatro last night

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

Or at least, i beat ante 8 for the first time. Didnt get a chance to see if you can increase the difficulty further. I always feel like Im extremely good at these single player card games because I grew up on yugioh campaign games

You beat ante 8 on white stakes. There's seven more stakes (difficulties) above that, each one adding new restrictions on top of the previous ones.

Beating it with the no face card deck is fun, you get more consistent draws but lack the big numbers of face cards.

But there's a ton of variables that make the game last as far as difficulty goes.

Wish there was a speed between 1x and 2x.

welp This game has taught me never to bring money to a casino.

i fucking hate the Nebula deck btw

Game's pretty hilarious when you get the ball rolling, though.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7d7b2f47.jpg

Thoughts on the game, overall?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bdtmlg/ama_i_am_localthunk_developer_and_artist_for/

Killmonger posted...

Thoughts on the game, overall?

its the best "poker" game ever made imho

What I really need is this game on my iPhone.

i was so fucking cocky in the OP btw. This game can be hard as hell and Ive never moved past white stakes.

kinda wish there was an option to strikeout some number of the different things youve unlocked. Sometimes I see a new Joker common got unlocked to the pool and I think well Ill probably never want that but it will be diluting how often I see the ones I do like

Okay, this game seems to be pretty fun but its definitely gonna kick my ass. With that being said, Ive only played for a few minutes so I dont really have a good understanding of the game as of now.

Doe posted...

What I really need is this game on my iPhone.

Were supposedly getting a mobile port of the game at some point.

NoMeLx22x posted...

Beating it with the no face card deck is fun, you get more consistent draws but lack the big numbers of face cards.

But there's a ton of variables that make the game last as far as difficulty goes.

That deck really likes that bus stop card, right?

Most annoying deck to get a first win on is that one with an extra joker slot but one less hand per round.

My brother gifted me this game last night saying I have to play it.

I'm looking forward to giving it some time later after work.

I literally know nothing about this game outside of the title art and this topic lol.

Error1355 posted...

My brother gifted me this game last night saying I have to play it.

I'm looking forward to giving it some time later after work.

I literally know nothing about this game outside of the title art and this topic lol.

I just saw it on steam, saw it was overwhelmingly positive and impulse purchased it

uwnim posted...

That deck really likes that bus stop card, right?

Most annoying deck to get a first win on is that one with an extra joker slot but one less hand per round.

Yup, you basically win if you get that one and a good multiplier. I think I won with Ride the Bus and the joker that gives you 5x after you've discarded 23 times or something like that.

Error1355 posted...

My brother gifted me this game last night saying I have to play it.

I'm looking forward to giving it some time later after work.

I literally know nothing about this game outside of the title art and this topic lol.

That's honestly the best way to do this game. Don't even look anything up. It will all make sense after like 10 minutes

Love this game

Picked up the game because of this topic, and made it to Ante 10 on my 3rd or 4th run. I think I got lucky with a shop discount early on, allowing me to just load up on upgrades every visit

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a86a6be0.jpg

+15 Mult for having 0 discards carried me far through a run

I've gotten to Ante 7 in my 3 hours or so with playing. I got pretty sloppy at the end of that run as I was watching a twitch stream while playing.

This is such a chill game. I put 90 min into my first play session in what felt like 25 minutes lol. One of them time erasing games for me.

I just heard of this on GMTK yesterday. Sounds interesting though.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


You basically need a lot of red seal cards and retrigger effects to hit the scientific notation scores.

Mystereave posted...

You basically need a lot of red seal cards and retrigger effects to hit the scientific notation scores.

I only just beat Red-stakes difficulty after another 20+ attempts (most runs ending by Ante 3 due to lack of funds), so I can't even imagine getting a score that high. Especially with the stakes stacking as you go up.

Mystereave posted...

You basically need a lot of red seal cards and retrigger effects to hit the scientific notation scores.

That, and a good couple of X-mult jokers that can say, take a huge multiplier, times it by 3, then times it by 3 again.

I've managed to beat it with a few different decks. Great game for how simple it is.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/fdca0a1d.jpg

I feel like one of the few people who isn't totally obsessed with this game

the moment-to-moment play is uninteresting (you usually just hard focus a single hand type and ignore everything else), the joker slots are so limited that it feels hard to actually make runs meaningfully different, and the required scores scale up so fast in endless mode that like 95% of jokers are just instantly worthless anyway

kirbymuncher posted...

I feel like one of the few people who isn't totally obsessed with this game

the moment-to-moment play is uninteresting (you usually just hard focus a single hand type and ignore everything else), the joker slots are so limited that it feels hard to actually make runs meaningfully different, and the required scores scale up so fast in endless mode that like 95% of jokers are just instantly worthless anyway

You're not alone. I had a friend yesterday show me the game and while it's interesting that they were able to make a roguelike out of poker, you're not wrong in that 99% of the moment to moment gameplay is really just playing a less fun unstructured version of poker against nobody and hoping the randomness gets you the multipliers you need. I can't see myself actually bothering to play the game when there are a million ways to play actual Texas hold'em against real people online without having to spend any money.

s0nicfan posted...

I can't see myself actually bothering to play the game when there are a million ways to play actual Texas hold'em against real people online

it's so funny to me that you make the comparison in this direction, since personally I have essentially no affinity for poker as a game and instead would make the comparison to other deckbuilder roguelikes. where it doesn't stack up too great either imo

it's a nice brain-off game but it feels more like time filler than legitimately fun

It would probably be better if different decks changed your odds of finding certain jokers.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/dc8bf444.jpg

Had this pretty funky run last night.

On black stakes and above, most jokers have a chance of being eternal. Eternal jokers pair really nicely with Madness and Hex/Ankh spectral cards.

uwnim posted...

It would probably be better if different decks changed your odds of finding certain jokers.

A problem with the game is it definitely feels like you get punished for unlocking common jokers

Mystereave posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/dc8bf444.jpg

Had this pretty funky run last night.

On black stakes and above, most jokers have a chance of being eternal. Eternal jokers pair really nicely with Madness and Hex/Ankh spectral cards.

Yup, Madness carried me through an Orange Stake round to earn the last deck. I had the pants joker that adds Mult for playing Two Pair as an Eternal, then found an Odd Todd that was eternal by the end the Madness Xmult was like 12 and carried me.

Now to beat Gold Stakes but first, think Im gonna try winning with the other unlockable decks

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/bda0a217.jpg

Had my first win, woo.

. Really sad that Balatro and Luck to be a Landlord are banned in about a dozen countries because "gambling".

Luck to be a landlord was amazing. I really have despised poker/solitaire or whatever my entire life but I'm a huge sucker for roguelikes, so I'll have to try this one.

I have no idea how poker works so I'm going to have to learn.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Yep it really becomes about getting good starting roles because you have very little power to influence with your own skill, and then sometimes you lose anyway because your discards just still aren't enough to pull out that hand you've leveled.

Scuffed runs are definitely a thing at higher stakes where you can easily lose momentum, but Ive sometimes pulled out a win from what I thought was going to be a disaster. Sometimes you just gotta hold out as best you can, spend all your cash to keep your deck afloat, and see if youll be blessed with that perfect run-saving Joker.

Id love to have a mode where I could start with a Joker of my choice. Would add identity to a run, and make it more fun to build around. You get a taste of that in Challenge Mode and its really neat.

I guess you could accomplish that somewhat with seeded runs but that takes effort to find out how to proc a specific joker early, and then it plays out basically the same every attempt.

the higher stakes (though I haven't done every single one yet) are where I think most of the fun is, personally. At base stake level it's basically effortless to clear ante8 and nothing you do really matters unless you do extremely dumb stuff

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3d5f1d39.jpg

It's possible to never get a chance to buy the re-roll voucher and still get the "you must sell a joker" final blind on the Jokerless challenge. IE you can do all the work and RNG grind only for the seed to be mathematically unwinnable, and you don't know until the last 5%. This just happened to me.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/adaa26fc.jpg
The very next run lol. Elder god RNG of immediately getting the free shop tag into a shop with 2 spectral packs that each had Destroy 5 Cards, Gain $20

Doe posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/adaa26fc.jpg
The very next run lol. Elder god RNG of immediately getting the free shop tag into a shop with 2 spectral packs that each had Destroy 5 Cards, Gain $20

Nice! Ive been working on the challenges off and on. Which was the easiest and toughest for you?