Balatro is the perfect example of a game that wants you to break it
Every so often, a Balatro run will click. The random number generator is on my side when I pull a series of buffs that perfectly align: It’s the Half Joker (+20 to the multiplier for hands with three or fewer cards) pulled as I was upgrading pair, three of a kind, and high card hands, topped off with a Supernova (the number of times a poker hand’s been played is added to the multiplier), Burnt Joker (upgrades your first discarded hand) and Space Joker (a one-in-four chance of upgrading a played poker hand). Add in extra face cards, a few Stone cards (that add chips) and buffs to those, too, and it feels hard not to win.
To describe this build in more straightforward terms, they’re a series of buffs that benefit small, heavily upgraded hands with high-scoring cards and lots of multipliers. These buffs all work together in Balatro’s satisfyingly interlocking systems to create a sort of synergistic harmony that these games thrive on.
A build like this isn’t easy to put together, especially if luck of the draw isn’t on your side. But when you get it just right, a deck like this feels like you’ve cracked Balatro wide open — as if you’re cheating. And it feels so, so good.
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I’m not the only one who sees the appeal: Balatro grossed more than $1 million within hours of its release in late February, according to GamesIndustry.biz. The game was profitable within one hour after it went live, publisher Playstack told the publication. The appeal of the game is in how simple it is in practice: It’s just making the score go up by playing poker hands. A run takes place over eight sequences (called antes), each consisting of three rounds (called blinds). With each round, the score necessary to continue goes up — so to keep playing, you must upgrade your cards and add different modifiers using the aforementioned Jokers to rack up bigger and bigger numbers. When you lose, you erase all the progress toward the eighth and final ante. (You can keep playing in endless mode,
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