Balatro

2025-03-03
Balatro is amazing because it's one of those games that tricks a bunch of people who hate math to do math problems. "Combinatorics" [crowd boos] "Order of operations" [crowd throws tomatoes at me]. "Banana joker on a two pair 10s (level 3 pairs) with a 100 chip bonus on even numbered cards" [crowd cheers and begins a riot]. It's genius. So genius that watching my partner play a couple runs, I sat down, played one round, won, felt the tempting whispers of Mephistopheles like the time I got prescribed opioid painkillers, and will never play it again. Some things were not meant for mere mortals.

2025-03-02
Compulsive. That'd be my one word review of Balatro. Everything about it, from the visual and auditory feedback as the numbers start to go higher and higher, to the dopamine drip within a single run of opening pack after pack, even to the music with it's weird 7/4 time signature where it loops over and over just as you think it's going to end. There's a lot of craft here and I respect it. But after watching my partner play several runs I clocked everything this game does and will do. As a deck builder/roguelike it's pretty threadbare. What's the hook? Unlocking new cards? Seeing slightly different variations of the same run over and over? So I sat down played one run, won, and put it down. Now it's time to play something else.