Here’s a fun fact about the roguelike genre: “Rogue” was actually a game, so the genre name roguelike literally means “like the game Rogue.” Sort of like “Soulslike” or maybe “Survivorslike” which I’m not sure is a real genre but definitely should be since there were hundreds of games released in the span of a few months that ripped off were inspired by Vampire Survivors. That, and the X-Com-ish style of tactical turn-based isometric RPG guff which is incredibly prevalent now. That genre name scheme kind of reminds me of the original boomer shooter term “Doom Clone”, before “FPS” became a thing. That’s very fun. I think it would be nice if there were more genres named after the major games that influenced them. Tennis-for-Twolike instead of sports games. Metal Gearers for games with a stealth focus. Pacman-esque for anything 2D at all. World-of-Warcraft-Joint (presented by Spike Lee) instead of MMO. The possibilities are endless!
Also “endless” is the main selling point of the roguelike genre. Buy this game and you’ll have endless replay value! Sure, any game technically has endless replayability, I’ve certainly played through a few a couple times over, but roguelikes/lites pride themselves on their gameplay loops of doing something over and over as you get a little better at it each time. It’s a relatively new genre in the grand scheme of gaming, as they’ve been popularized by modern indie devs, and on my radar as a genre since around 2012 with Rogue Legacy, and FTL getting a fair amount of play from me. That and a few other roguelikes have been enjoyable, but if I’m being truly honest with my biases, I view the genre in a mildly negative light. I don’t feel I appreciate them as much as fully designed games that don’t rely on randomized/procedural elements for gameplay, but I want to put my tastes to the test once in awhile.
Enter: Balatro! A roguelike game from solo developer LocalThunk. Based on your grandfather’s favorite card game, Balatro mixes elements of Poker with gamified roguelike abilities, from gathering various enhanced playing cards to improve your deck, and jokers that can snowball your score out of control with unique game changing abilities. Much of Balatro is derived from Poker, with (usually) a standard 52 card deck as your launch point each game. You have 8 rounds of three matches each where you need to earn over a score threshold that increases with each match. You score by playing poker hands which are enhanced with different modifiers you collect from booster packs after each match.
The main draw for this game, beyond regular poker I suppose, is the tactics and planning that you do yourself in order to create the best possible deck and win the 8 rounds. You keep in mind the jokers and cards you want to keep that will hopefully work in synergy with each other to create completely broken builds. If all goes well, big numbers go brrrrrrr and your dopamine receptors have a party when you rack up the score. Your enjoyment of Balatro therefore benefits greatly from you learning the various cards and jokers you can gather from the booster packs you open after each hand played. You can usually go into a game knowing what build you are looking to do, but if you fail to hit the correct RNG, it can get rather frustrating having to rinse and repeat MANY times over until everything clicks just right. It’s pretty easy to lose in this game, and the desire to restart an entire run is pretty overwhelming even after a few hands played if you don’t luck out right away.
Achievement hunting is certainly a large part of the enjoyment of this for me, along with unlocking all the jokers and other specialty cards you can discover. Though again, finding all of the unlockables isn’t skill-based and wholly from getting lucky with RNG. That’s probably the main crux of this game. The randomization is off the charts, with nigh everything being luck. Luck in pulling the correct cards each hand, luck in getting offered the best jokers, luck in pulling the correct enhancements. Some roguelikes are like that, but many are skill based with you being able to struggle along with weaker equipment if you’re good enough. Get a bad starting character in Rogue Legacy? You can still progress far if you’re playing well. Get a a bad (or even mediocre) start with the RNG in Balatro? It’s pretty much over. Often in card games as well, it’s down to the luck of the draw. A major sticking point for me is that Balatro burns both ends of the candle of luck, which makes the chances wildly extreme and doubly disappointing if it doesn’t pan out. More often than not if you get a few good jokers or cards that are really beneficial, there’s not much you can do to lose the game. But the same goes for when you just don’t have any luck at all; There’s pretty much no way you’re going to win.
When it all goes well though, oh boy does it feel good. You gather that Joker that makes it easier to get flushes, enhance the score of played flushes for the entire game, get a few cards that multiple your score and now you’re beating matches in just one play.
In the end, that’s all card games are anyway. Luck. If you go into the game knowing that, you’ll probably avoid a lot of disappointment. Card games fit well into the roguelike genre. They don’t take long if things are going bad, and you can hop into a new game quite easily. At least it becomes easy to recognize when things are going poorly early on so you can dip out and do it over again to not waste much time. There’s a lot of unlocks to discover and some fun challenges you can set for yourself, or hunt out if it’s tied to an achievement.
Balatro is quite fun though. I’ve put at least 30 hours into it as of this writing and I pop back in for more every now and again. The game brings familiarity, with your prior knowledge of poker, making it easy enough to jump into, but has much of its own style and elements which keeps it interesting to play. The enjoyment of discovering new builds you make up, or finally lucking out with RNG to pull yourself out of a dire strait is unmatched by any other card-based game I’ve played. But, you’ll get burned and burned a lot. In the end, that’s roguelikes for you. You need to learn to fail to get better.
Balatro is a rare roguelike in the sense that I actually enjoy it. While it has flaws, mostly how the RNG can cause the game to be either nigh impossible to win or lose, it has enough unique elements to keep it interesting and make me come back for more.
8/10
