I don't like poker, but I love Balatro – and I mean, hey, at least that's what I have in common with its creator (even though I've played significantly more deck builders than they have). It's pretty amazing that someone who has no experience at all in almost everything their game is about can make such a banger, but here we are.
A few weeks after release, almost everyone on the PC Gamer team had spent an embarrassing number of hours digging into this thing. My attention was almost evenly split between Balatro and Helldivers 2, with the latter completely shaking up the landscape of live-service shooters, which gives some indication of the quality of the former.
Fortunately, Balatro has had a success proportional to how damn good it is: it sold 500,000 copies in a short period of time, and now that number has doubled, to an incredible 1 million copies, as announced on the game's console official Twitter. Personally, I'm just glad that some of the confusing age rating issues didn't slow the game down.
And why? Well, your typical roguelike deck builder leans more towards the RPG genre – throwing enemies and bosses at you, letting you manage HP and resources, and so on. In comparison, Balatro simply asks you to keep your numbers as high as possible. There are minimum scores you need to achieve and “boss blinds” that affect your strategies, but otherwise it's devilishly simple.
This morning Balatro reached a momentous milestone…ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! We have some fun things planned for the future, but for now… pic.twitter.com/S7PEb0qjeGMarch 18, 2024
Balatro is the distilled, strong moonshine to Slay the Spire's colorful cocktail with three umbrellas in it – the latter is tasty, but the former will confuse you with the tune of “Wait, I've been logged into this thing for 30 hours?”
If you're like me, you may have been put off by the game's poker-inspired aesthetic. One of my problems with real card games that use a traditional deck is how much memorization is required. Luckily, Balatro requires little card counting, and you don't even need to know the poker rules to play, thanks to a menu you can open at any time to remember the difference between a flush and a straight.
What a Balatro does Get Right allows you to stack a number of unique modifiers, breaking the typical rules of over-the-knee poker. After the first three rounds, there is no “best hand” in Balatro, only the hands you were actually built for – and the discard system helps you deal with your bad luck. Unless you are me and the universe is conspiring against you. All I needed was a foursome or a tenner, man.
