Balatro

Balatro (2024) is a card-battle game where you build poker hands using special cards that turbo-charge your chances to beat an increasing score target. Play involves combining classic poker hands with Jokers, Tarot and Planet cards that create combos and enhancements to your cards. It stands out for the simple premise and more-ish fun of finding combinations of cards and deck-adjustments that stack up for big points.

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Balatro is a poker-inspired deck-building game where you play multiple poker hands to score enough points to meet an increasing target. Each round you have a certain number of hands to play and limited chances to discard cards for new ones. You earn points for each hand, but this can be hugely increased with combinations of special cards you also have in your deck. For example, you can make Full Houses worth more, or get more points if you play three Straights in a round.

As you progress you learn how the Jokers, Tarot, Planet and Spectral cards work together in complex combinations. They can be used to increase the value of hands you are playing, power up your cards, change the rules of the game or the balance of playing cards in your deck. The key is using these varied instruments that create combinations that maximise your scoring potential. Understanding how each of the individual cards best works with other cards is a big part of the fun.

The result is a game where you immerse yourself in the web of card-to-card interactions and synergies. There's even an in-depth stats screen to study your best hands and most used Jokers.

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Our examiner, Ellen Robertson, first checked Balatro 13 months ago. It was re-examined by Thom Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.