Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[AlStar]

What happens when you combine poker with a deckbuilder roguelike? Balatro.

You start off with a typical 52 card playing card deck. Using jokers (cards that change the scoring of various cards/hands), planet cards (increase the base value of hands), tarots (variety of effects, but mostly dealing with changing characteristics of your individual cards), spectral cards (basically superpowered tarots), and booster packs (has a high chance of containing cards that have already been upgraded), you attempt to get through 8 rounds.

Each round has three "opponents" - Small Blind, Large Blind, and Boss Blind. Blinds start as low as 300 chips (for the round 1 small blind) to 300,000 chips (for the round 8 boss with the special 'extra high blind'.) After you beat the round 8 boss, you're allowed to free play against blinds that increase astronomically - there's an achievement and unlockable joker behind the round 13 boss.

That's about it - the game is all about finding broken combinations of jokers and cards; using planets to improve the payoffs of your most-played hands. Certain jokers are unlocked by fufilling conditions - like having 5 'glass' cards in your deck, or winning a game without ever playing a flush, etc.

Different starting scenarios are given by different deck colors - for instance, the Red deck starts with an extra discard every round, while Yellow starts with an extra $10.

It's well put together, and offers a surprising amount of gameplay. I've managed to beat the lowest difficulty level (white stakes) with most of the decks, and the second level (red stakes) with the Green deck (which gains extra cash for left over plays/discards, but doesn't earn interest like the other decks do.)

[AlStar]

Thought I'd bump my own topic just to mention that the game's still managed to hold my interest; although I've switched to playing just a game here and there, instead of multi-hour sessions.

The levels of difficulty just keep stacking (literally - each new difficulty level incorporates the levels below it). I've managed to get up to orange stakes, which I believe is the second-to-last before gold stakes, which is tough. The newest twist is that the bonus packs get $1 more expensive after each boss round. That means that by the final round, you're paying 2-3x as much per pack.

Showing that the game isn't entirely luck-based, I've taken to leveling up my other decks after I get tired of trying to beat orange stakes, and I'm finding that I'm having a much easier time, overall, playing at lower stakes. I think a lot of it is strategic passing - where, instead of playing against the Small or Large Blind, you skip them for a reward. Deciding if the passing reward is better than the cash, shop, and other rewards you'd get if you played out the hand can be a tough call occasionally.