Balatro 12+

This game is a gobsmacking innovation, on a level with Slay the Spire. “Poker meets solitaire” is a terrible description; it’s so much more than that. It’s a card based roguelike that gets everything right.

It’s complex and deep, but never overwhelms you. There’s a lot going on, but the learning curve is utterly painless. You’ll know enough to win in your first few playthroughs, but you’ll discover more and more subtleties over time. As your skill improves, the challenge scales with you. There are always new goals to chase, but you are in complete control of what to try and when, and how difficult (or not) you want your game to be. And while winning is satisfying, Balatro achieves the highest virtue a roguelike can aspire to — it’s great fun even when you lose.

When I saw Balatro on the PC Gamer top 10 of all time list, I thought, B.S. No card game belongs on that list. I was wrong. The universal gushing a five star reviews are totally legit. It’s the best game you never thought you’d like, and the more you play, the deeper that truth becomes.

If you are into Poker or Roguelikes (Binding of Isaac for example,) you will most likely find Balatro to be a very interesting and fun. Jokers are like powerups for your deck and lead to a lot of fun interactions and interesting combos. Now with that being said, I feel the nature of how the game difficulty progresses ruins the expectation of experimentation. As to meet with the high antes you either need to set up the same powerful, but repetitive combos, or get very lucky, which leaves a very small window to mess with jokers as it becomes very quickly becomes punishing to do so.

This does not ruin the game in the slightest, just my ability to explore it further.

I own this game on PC as well and very much enjoy the interface changes made for mobile and I actually find myself trying to drag cards in the PC version because I’ve become accustomed to dragging them here. Highly recommend for mobile. My only gripe for mobile is for some reason, this game makes my phone very hot and eats battery very fast. Like it’s taking a LOT of processing power to play. My phone usually has a long battery life but to lose 20% or more on a single run of Balatro is kind of unfortunate. If this gets fixed, it’s an easy 5 star.