Balatro launches on phones, saving commutes and ruining workdays everywhere
Balatro, the indie gaming phenomenon that combines poker rules with random runs and a touch of deckbuilding, has finally launched on phones. You can pick it up for 10 euros at the iOS App Store or Google Play Storeand it has also been added to Apple Arcade’s library.
In other words, you cannot escape Balatro. Prepare to say goodbye to productivity.
Balatro launched on consoles and PC in February to immediate success, a game so successful that players half-jokingly complained about losing hours to the immersive loop. As an indie game without a lot of graphical complexity, it’s perfectly suited to the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck – but releasing it on phones makes it so much easier to play in a pinch, whether you’re queuing or on your laundry guard. Or while watching a program. Or walking a dog. Or actually always, ever.
The mobile version does sacrifice a bit of the flashier interface effects, but you’d have to put the games side by side to notice it, and all the original gameplay is retained. Balatro is an easy to learn and increasingly difficult game to master as you reach the higher difficulty levels, but the basics of the game are: use the cards in your hand to build poker hands and score enough points for each round.
As in normal poker, higher value hands such as straights and flushes score more points than pairs and three-of-a-kinds. You have a limited number of hands to play and discards to execute while you hunt for the right set of cards.
You must beat two rounds of small and large “blinds” with increasing scores before facing a “boss” blind that overrides a special condition on the fight – perhaps cards from one suit (spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts) you don’t score points or you draw cards face down after playing a hand.
Once you beat the boss, you go up an “ante” or difficulty level, and the scores you need to beat for blinds and bosses increase. After the eighth ante you win the run and you can continue playing indefinitely or start over for a new challenge.
The trick to scoring higher with increasingly larger blinds? Cheat! In between rounds you can buy a few things to even the odds in your favor. Most importantly, you can buy or acquire Jokers, which improve your hands or add bonuses for certain suits or ranges of cards played – this is where what you pick up along the way most changes what types of hands you chase during your run. But you can also buy other extras, such as planet cards that increase the value of hand types (pairs, straights, flushes, etc.) or tarot cards that increase the cards in your deck.
Sound complicated? You pick it up as you go. Poker skills come in handy when estimating the chances of whether you will draw the right hand or switch to a new strategy. But the mix of Jokers, hand values, new cards in your deck and boss antes makes every run feel new. Even if you crash and burn while running, it feels easy to restart and try your luck again.
That, in a sense, is also the problem. Now Balatro is everywhere. You have no excuse not to play – you they do have phones, right? Woe betide the cubicle warriors and remote rangers who just want to play a game during their lunch break, the store or service workers who want distraction during their break. You get it. And then you end a run in triumph or tragedy and look at the clock to see if an hour has passed, if not more. You have been warned.
