I've played the most addictive mobile game of 2024 my time with Balatro on Android

Daniel Allen

Fri, September 27, 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC

One of this yearâs hottest new games isnât a slick sci-fi FPS or pixelated bit of nostalgia bait. Instead, itâs a poker game. Of course, calling Balatro just a poker game is doing it a huge disservice, even though itâs not far off the mark. If one were to adorn Balatro in genre labels, it could best be described as a poker-inspired, deck-building roguelike, and as strange as it may seem, this game â which has just been released on Android and iOS â is insanely difficult to put down, even if you're playing on a budget phone .

What is Balatro?

Just the basics

At the start of every game of Balatro, you have a standard deck of 52 playing cards. With each hand, you are dealt eight cards and your goal is to make poker hands to score points. Each poker hand awards a different amount of points from high card, which awards five points plus the value of the card played (aces are worth 11, face cards are worth 10, and all others are worth face value), to a straight flush, which awards 100 points plus the value of the cards and an 8Ã multiplier.

For each round (also called blinds, depending on the context), you need to score more points to move on. Every third round is called the Boss Blind, which will nerf your game for one round. Nerfs can be anything from making all the cards of one suit worthless to limiting you to playing just one hand.

Things start to get interesting when you add in tarot cards, planet cards, and spectral cards. These are special consumable cards that can change or modify cards in your deck, raise the scoring potential of particular hands, or increase your money.

But the true heart of Balatro, and what makes it fun to come back to over and over, is the collection of 150 joker cards (âbalatroâ is a Latin word for jester or buffoon). Jokers modify your points or your multiplier and dictate how you approach a run. Some jokers add bonuses based on the suit of the scoring cards, others based on the hand played. If you donât change the way you play based on the jokers you get, you wonât make it to the eighth Boss Blind, the metric for clearing a run.

Is Balatro on Android good ?

What Balatro mobile gets right

The original version of Balatro (released on PC and console) is a near-perfect game. Thankfully, the developer LocalThunk and publisher Playstack didnât change much. This is particularly true when compared to the PC version, since the touch interface on mobile has a near one-to-one correlation with the mouse interface on desktop.

The biggest divergence from the original is in how actions are taken on cards. In the PC and console releases, selecting a card reveals a tab that you can interact with to sell it, select it, or use it. The mobile release deals with this in two ways. If youâre a fan of consoles, you can pair your favorite Bluetooth controller and play it like you would on a Steam Deck or a Switch. Going this route, the little tabs will pop up, and you can select them by pressing the indicated shortcut button.

On the other hand, if youâre more of a point-and-click type of person, the Balatro team did a great job adapting that paradigm to the touch interface of your phone. Instead of the tabs popping up (which would be too small to accurately touch on most phone screens), there are now zones where you can drag your card to sell it, select it, or use it. Other than one minor inconvenience, they could not have come up with a better solution

What Balatro mobile gets wrong

The biggest problem with the zones has to do with the jokers. There are strategic reasons to change the order of the jokers in your hand. Often you want a particular class of joker in the right-most spot, which happens to be next to the zone for selling your jokers. In other words, itâs in the perfect spot for a run-ending error.

Another issue with the mobile release is the size of everything. Itâs a mobile screen, so size is always an issue, but getting your touch just right can sometimes be a pain. It also makes it difficult to discern between cards at a glance. Itâs not that the cards arenât legible or distinct, itâs that you need to do a double-take to make sure you have a jack and not a king, or a heart instead of a diamond.

Finally, the game is still a little rough around the edges. The biggest issue is that the mechanics of some of the jokers are broken (in particular the ones related to selling cards). For example, the Campfire joker gets a cumulative +0.25 multiplication bonus for every card sold. If you drag a card into the sell zone, you wonât get your bonus, but if you sell it using a Bluetooth controller, you will.

There are some other game-breaking shenanigans out there, but theyâre too involved to properly explain and I hope that the developers will be fixing them sooner rather than later.

Is Balatro worth the money?

If you want to get Balatro on Android or iOS, it will cost you $10. Considering the mobile game is identical to its PC and console counterparts and it costs $5 less, thatâs a pretty good deal. Just keep in mind that Balatro is the kind of game that can go from a quick 20-minute session to losing 2 hours of your life in the blink of an eye. If you do decide to treat yourself to Balatro (it's worth it), just make sure you donât have any obligations for the rest of the day.