Day 2396 | Playing Balatro

I had the Balatro Game on my radar for some time as something to explore having a hunch that it would be one that I potentially could get lost on which is rare for games to achieve these days. I didn't really know that much about it aside from the fact that it has been getting a lot of praise and I expected it to be a combination of Slay The Spire which I highly enjoyed and Poker which I used to play a lot. This is pretty much exactly what it is.

Balatro Gameplay:
So you get a regular deck of cards and draw I believe 8 cards you can for a poker hand with. You can either lay one down and get points on it or select some cards and remove them. You have a 4 times during a game that you can lay down a hand and 4 times where tiy can remove cards and get new ones for it. In those rounds you need to score a certain amount of points to beat the level. Once you do, you earn some Dollars that you can use in a store to buy Joker Cards that give permanent benefits, level ups, Vouchers, and other things that will make your deck more powerful and the game more interesting. The next round the score you need to reach gets higher and it's a matter of making the right choices and also getting a bit lucky to reach the end.

By my 3rd try which took over an hour and 25 rounds, I already reached the end and unlike Slay The Spire there doesn't really seem to be some kind of campain mode where it takes longer to reach the end. This said, I had plenty of fun with this one and you can see that the 1-Man-Dev just really wanted to make a fun game without any expectation to Sell 2M+ copies winning indie game of the year. This is what more games should be like, an affordable fixed purchase price and zero pay2win or microtransatcions afterward. It's one of those games similar to Slay the Spire where I likely will regularly play a round and just have fun with it before moving on to the next one keeping very fond memories.

New Day Goals: Most focus on Sunday will be on the 4 football matches as usual.