Balatro Switch Review

Recently, we’ve seen a spate of games that play outside of the usual genres with unique and interesting concepts, focussed on a more gameplay-centric style over all else. These games are the ones you tend to hear about on social media or have friends raving about it, forcing you to dive in to see what the fuss is about. Balatro is one such game. Balatro is Latin for “The Fool” or “Jester” and it seems rather appropriate since this game will have you spending a lot of time surrounded by Jokers. What’s It Like? Shuffle the deck, the jokers are wild, and place your bets as we review Balatro for the Nintendo Switch.

Balatro is quite a unique proposition that plays like a game of poker, albeit with mysterious modifiers in the form of Joker cards. These cards can be as simple as adding a multiplier to your score, to allow you to skip sequential cards for a flush. You are tasked with winning a Small Blind, Big Blind, and a final “Challenge” Blind before upping the ante to do it all over again. To do so, you will have a certain amount of hands to play, and a certain amount of discards at your disposal to help you up the ante. Each ante significantly increases the chips required to beat the round, before getting to the Challenge Blind, which has its own unique modifiers that are designed to gate your progress. Some may be making any cards designated as clubs being unable to count toward your hand, or drawing cards face down. Initially, a lot of these obstacles will defeat you, but as you gain more experience in the world of Balatro you will become more scrupulous to the tricks it attempts to play on you.

While Poker may be the basis for the cards, Balatro is fairly accessible to all as it explains the hands before you play them, showing a preview of both the chips you may earn, as well as the multiplier. It doesn’t take your Joker cards into account, however, but it does reflect the effect of other cards like the Celestial cards that upgrade specific hands played that offer more rewards. On top of Celestial cards, you can also purchase powerful Tarot cards that permanently modify cards to create jokers, as well as standard cards to bolster your decks, and Arcana cards that add special modifiers like addition chips and modifiers. There are a lot of mechanics at play here and while it may seem overwhelming at first, they are very well implemented, and finding combinations that work best for you evolves the more you play.

Progression is based on unlocks for achieving certain criteria and milestones. Ending your run will tell you if you’ve unlocked a new deck with unique stats, or new Joker cards to add to the rotation. It’s rewarding and spurs the player on to continue to try to beat the run and unlock the next difficulty tier. You will fail a lot. It took me several hours to beat my first run as I fell victim to The Challenge Blind mainly at Ante level 6 and 7 which saw me get knocked down to the first round over again. Despite this, I wasn’t deterred from the game and looked forward to building a new deck to beat the run. I kept asking myself “Is this the run?” and it’s that addictive loop that will keep you invested in Balatro. There’s also an endless mode unlocked when you beat your first run… although that may take some time.

The pixel art style works for smooth and solid gameplay, with no performance hitches. It’s complemented by an old-school CRT filter that can be turned off if need be, and the simple style means that Balatro hooks you with its core gameplay instead of dazzle and style. For my vision-impaired poker players, I’m pleased to report that Balatro has certain accessibility options to make life a little easier. For starters, you are able to turn off the CRT filter, reduce screen shake, turn down the bloom effects, and select an option for high-contrast cards. The only issue that may arise is that some of the card effects text in the UI can be rather small, so the screen zoom function might come in handy in those particular instances. Thankfully, there are no time restrictions on play meaning you can take your time to read all the status effects before you make your play.

You can choose to play with your controller or use touch controls which are implemented well. Touch controls require you to hold your finger down on a card to see its effects which means sometimes your hand gets in the way of the action, whereas standard controls offer the tootips on the screen when you hover over it. I found both control styles to be agreeable, but due to the fast-paced nature of the game, I opted to use touchscreen controls to smash through the rounds.

Balatro is an unconventional game that takes risks and is all the better for it. It’s a fun and rewarding experience that will keep you engaged with its intricate and well-implemented mechanics, as well as its ability to slowly reveal its secrets to you the more you play. For the price of around $22 AUD, there are several hours of entertainment and plenty of things to unlock here for the price of a movie ticket. While the game may be about jokers and playing tricks on the player, you would certainly be a fool to pass up on this uniquely challenging and engaging rogue-like deck builder.

So, What’s It Like? Balatro is like Hearthstone crossed with a game of Texas Hold ’em Poker.