No one's talking about Balatro on a Poker forum?

There was a time when Balatro would have been a big deal in the Video Game forum with people discussing strategy. Unfortunately this forum is dead. The fifth post in this forum is from January. Not enough community in here any longer to have in depth discussions on a specific game, sadly.

I've been playing this a bunch recently

best so far is getting to ante 12

addictive!

I'm moving on from StS to Balatro now. Going to dive in.

Entertaining game, I have tons of time in it. Slowly working in Completionist++. One of the few games I recommended to friends as it can be enjoyed casually on a plane ride or whenever you have a bit of downtime.

I play this game A LOT
and then when I'm not playing I watch videos of people playing

I probably need an intervention
or the NFL season to start

beat all 15 decks on white and red stake
a handful on green stake and black stake

beat the checkered deck on gold stake

got the ghost deck up to blue stake where I keep stalling out

I wish mobile would have been out when I was cracked in to it. Might try it again now that it's on phone.

There was a good amount of discussion in the Stream thread. It is obv an excellent game. I expect it to pick up a couple of Steam Awards at the end of the year.

finally beat all 15 decks on gold stake

black deck was the hardest

Nice! Great job!

People at work really pushing me to get this. Might be a good way to get off my stupid pointless time wasting games on my phone.

Feel like enjoying this game is contingent on also liking video poker.

I'm struggling to score higher than 50k.

This looks like something that I would like and spend like a hundred hours playing.

Which is why I won't play it even once.

in case anyone wants to try a fun seeded run:

PDNBQE98

play on white stake ghost deck and skip the first round for a mega arcana pack

good luck! 😃

Spoiler

Show

I don't understand what seeded runs are.

Seeds are a common thing with rogue-like games (Balatro is one such game) that allow you to replay the exact environment of that run. Essentially an alphanumeric code that replicates the conditions of that run, so you can share it and let other people play that same seed and replicate, or try new strategies.

Cheating!

FINALLY managed to beat the orange stake (with the first deck, +1 discard) - took me a while and I have to admit that the grind wasn't all that fun. I had to get very lucky by finding the legendary joker that gives x2 mult for each k and q scored early and build the deck around that. From there I played super careful, but I still may have lost, fortunately got the joker that re-trigged all face cards. At this point it was smooth sailing, I made it all the way up to ante 12, where the game wanted me to score 1.2 billion for small blind, but my deck was "only" scoring around 120 million per hand

My current stats after getting this about 2.5 months ago:

Progress: 62%

Collection: 99% (339/340)
Challenges: 95% (19/20)
Joker Stickers: 22% (271/1200)
Deck Stake Wins: 33% (40/120)

Technically, every run is seeded. Randomness doesn't exist in computers but there's enough variations to make every game feel unique. Two people playing the exact same seed and doing the same exact things would see the same order of cards, jokers, etc.

I now understand that, but once people make one different choice, doesn’t that break the sameness? I add or delete a card to my deck, now every draw is different

I only picked up Balatro recently, but I’ve got to say - the devs really managed to create a fresh take on card games. It feels like a proper reimagining of the genre. Simple on the surface, but surprisingly deep and addictive.

I love it honestly

Would recommend people to check out multiplayer Balatro, it's a custom mod you have to download with leaderboards, very competitive and addicting.