Last night I was very angry and upset, and when you're angry and upset you tend to make stupid decisions. That stupid decision was purchasing Balatro from the App Store.
I've heard of Balatro mainly through unfunny memes on Bluesky, but I never bothered checking it out. I've seen ads for it online, but I never cared to do more than visit the App Store page. Come on, $10, for a card game, in this economy? I didn't bother to check out the game itself until I saw a video of an 11 year old going crazy at the game. I didn't know what he was doing, but he looked really good at the same. Something about this just made me go "hell yeah" in my mind and download the game.
Balatro is poker if it was a roguelike with a pixel art style. If you think about it, regular poker is already a roguelike, despite poker being a card game and Rogue being a text adventure. The goal is to try and reach a certain number of chips before you run out of turns, the number of chips needed getting exponentially higher. With the money you get from winning, you can purchase jokers and other cards, which help you get more points.
The real fun in this game comes from the satisfaction of making a ton of combos, as well as the large variety in jokers. There are 150 of them, which means there are plenty of different ways to play, which is fun because you never know what to expect.
Because Balatro is a card game, you look smart while playing it. I don't understand poker, so I was very confused for the first 5 minutes of gameplay. But suddenly it just clicked, and once it clicks, it's over for you.
Balatro is really addictive. There is just so much going on that it becomes hard to put down, especially on mobile.
I would like to state that I am nowhere near good at this game. I haven't gotten close to reaching a point near the end. And even if you reach the end, there are so many different modes to try out. It is amazing just how much they were able to do with poker.
For $10, Balatro is a little more expensive of a game (at least on mobile). But I would say its completely worth it. There is so much to do. Just be warned, all of your free time may be taken up by this game. Or maybe you'll just drop it after 3 days.