You play poker hands to reach a target score and acquire joker cards to enhance or multiply your scoring hands. There are also consumable card types that enhance your deck and ways of scoring.

I had Balatro in my Steam wishlist for a while, so I knew what it was all about, but I had no idea how addictive it would be. Im caning it every night!

It’s a deckbuilder like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, where each run takes about 45 minutes. Sometimes, you push it too much and fail, so you start again immediately—it's a total time vacuum. You always feel like you’re just about to get the perfect synergy of Jokers and other enhancements.

My first win I pretty much only played three of a kind hands. It’s a hand that's relatively easy to come by—just three of the same card, any suit—and it’s easily enhanced. There's a joker that multiplies hands with three or fewer cards, one that enhances three of a kind itself, and a few other multipliers for suits. I also levelled up three of a kind with planet cards… does that make any sense? Basically, as the goal score increased each round, the total score I could get from a three of a kind hand BLEW past it.

There are many things to consider when playing a run of Balatro, which is probably what makes it so replayable. The randomization means you never really know what you’re going to have to consider. The main drive is reaching as high a score as possible based on the jokers, consumables, and deck you've been able to build. What works in one playthrough might be absolutely useless in the next, so you have to adapt. That three of a kind strategy isn't as lucrative for a deck serves flush hands more frequently, for example.

Everything about this game works for me: the pace, the fact that I can do other things while I play it—it doesn’t consume all of my attention, but it still feels like a great problem to think through. The overall aesthetic is right up there too: 150 joker-themed illustrations, the card effects, the art for the card enhancements—it’s all razor-sharp pixel art, all made by one guy apparently, @localthunk. And it's so cheap too, what's stopping you?

A remake of a 3DS game that uses the card game golf as a basis for its gameplay. In golf, the player must clear all cards from the field, which they accomplish by selecting a card that is either one point higher or one point lower than the focus card that they drew from their deck.

I've barely played this because of Balatro…

I re watched the Elden Ring trailer a couple of times, watched Vaatividya’s predictably intense breakdown of the trailer, then debated starting a new character and burning through the Elden Ring all over again. There are WAY too many other games to be played in this life so I decided to cane Balatro all weekend instead.