Full box for Balatro. The game created by LocalThunk — a studio with only one developer! — and published by Playstack is currently a hit with PlayStation, Xbox and PC players since its launch on February 20. Just eight hours later, sales exceeded $1 million. And in three days, 250,000 copies had been sold!
The danger of addiction lurks!
Balatro is certainly not at the level of a Palworld with its 25 million copies or Helldivers II, but for a card game, it’s not so bad! And after the excellent critical reception, word of mouth will propel the title even further. At first glance, Balatro yet seems modest. The objective is to chain levels for as long as possible while reaching the required number of tokens (blind). And to achieve this, all you have to do is line up the victorious hands which are none other than those of poker: pair, three of a kind, straight, full house, etc.
Rest assured, no poker experience is necessary to play Balatro, which takes the player by the hand with simple explanatory panels, not boring and always accessible. But what really spices up the game are the joker and bonus cards, which must be purchased with the winnings accumulated during the games. Jokers have all kinds of effects on hands: for example, a multiplier bonus for two similar pairs, or even additional chips for a particular card.
Bonus cards (tarot, planet and spectral) have various effects on playing cards and their abilities. It is possible to accumulate 5 jokers and 2 bonuses, and over the course of the game these limits can jump. Very quickly, the scores obtained by a well-thought-out hand can climb to new heights! And you will have to play finely to beat the increasingly high blinds.
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In Balatro, you will lose, it is inevitable. But thanks to its roguelike principle, each game allows you to unlock new joker and bonus cards which can appear randomly in the store. And of course, in the event of defeat, we only want to restart the game!
The game also has the luxury of a nice production with amusing illustrations (especially on the joker cards). If Balatro is excellent on all platforms, we recommend playing it on Switch or on Steam Deck, it is a game well suited to mobile devices (iOS and Android versions are also in the pipeline).
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