Balatro

While new releases like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Helldivers 2 may have received all of the attention from the gaming media, more and more people are starting to talk about a roguelike poker game called Balatro. Launching around a month ago on all major platforms, Balatro was developed by just one person. Despite its modest beginnings, the game has already managed to sell over a million copies, benefiting from a word of mouth campaign among fans. If you can't get enough of the poker-style roguelike, then developer…

Balatro is a game that feels made for me. It’s a roguelite card game that, due to it being a fresh take on poker, is all about risk and reward. Launching just last month, it already sits at the coveted “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam, with over 18,000+ positive reviews. For the unfamiliar, it’s a card game, where you have to play hands of poker to win chips. Jokers are added to the top of your board which give you extra chips per hand, multiply your entire score, or play into some unexpectedly wacky mechanics —…

The game originally shipped for consoles and Windows PCs — and was briefly banned from some storefronts over a ratings mistake. It’s back, and there’s also now a MacOS port that you can access by buying the game on Steam. The full Reddit AMA has loads of insight into Balatro’s development process, including their biggest influence (Luck Be a Landlord), and how they intentionally didn’t play Slay the Spire or other popular roguelike deckbuilders during early development to avoid cribbing from them. Here’s a handy AMA…

While playing the poker roguelike Balatro, you may come across a mysterious blank voucher. The card’s description says it does nothing. Is this true, or does it actually do something? Here’s what the Blank Voucher really does in Balatro. Buy the Blank Voucher ten times The first time you buy the Blank Voucher, it will do nothing, just like it says in its description. Nothing will happen the next few times you buy the Blank Voucher, too. Keep being stubborn though, and on your tenth purchase, you will unlock the…

I am one of those people who feels like crying when the rules of a board game are explained to me, so card games are generally not my thing. In real life poker, I inevitably get bored after a few rounds, go all in, and crash out spectacularly, just so something will happen. But real life poker is not Balatro. Balatro might be the best card game you will ever come across. I specifically left my Steam Deck at home this morning so that I would not sit at my desk playing Balatro instead of doing all the other, less fun things…

The hit roguelike card game, Balatro, has been pulled from some digital storefronts due to an overnight ratings change.The issue has mostly affected EU storefronts such as the Nintendo eShop and PSN Store. However, publisher PlayStack is confident that the game's availability on Steam will not be impacted. "This is not an issue with the stores themselves, however a reaction to an overnight change to Balatro's age rating from 3+ to 18+ by a ratings board without any advance warning, due to a mistaken…

Playstack, the publisher of popular roguelike deckbuilder Balatro confirmed on Twitter that the game has been temporarily removed from some digital storefronts due to a sudden rating change. Apparently, the UK rating board PEGI changed the rating from 3+ to 18+ overnight due to “prominent gambling imagery” which prompted the sudden delistings. The problem here is that there is literally no gambling in Balatro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgrv9giaNO8 According to Playstack, they specifically addressed this topic…

Playstack wrote that the change happened “due to a mistaken belief that the game ‘contains prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling.’” Playstack went on to vehemently deny that Balatro contains gambling of any kind, affirming that its developer “is staunchly anti-gambling.”In an email to The Verge, Playstack PR manager Wout van Halderen went into a bit more detail about the affected consoles and countries, writing, “Most Nintendo Switch stores across Europe are temporarily affected, as well as…

LocalThunk Balatro, a poker roguelike that has become a surprise hit after being released last month, will get delisted in some regions after a sudden rating change that claimed the game encouraged gambling. “This is not an issue with the stores themselves, however, a reaction to an overnight change to Balatro‘s age rating from 3+ to 18+ by a ratings board without any advance warning, due to a mistaken belief that the game ‘contains prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling,'” publisher…

In Casino Royale, James Bond gets a bit of poker advice: you never play your hand; you play the man sitting across from you.Okay, but what if you just played your hand? What if no one was sitting at the other end of the table? Balatro, a new turn-based card game available on most platforms, takes the mechanics of poker and turns them into the basis of a compelling roguelike, the subgenre of games where each playthrough is a single perilous attempt.Balatro is a poker game inasmuch as Scrabble is a word game. Knowing the…