General Gaming Balatro is fantastic, update: 1 million copies sold

[Best]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

I love Queens Blood card game. 

 

I'm only just trying to get you guys riled up in here. I'm happy that you guys are enjoying Balatro. It's quite the accomplishment for a card game to receive this type of recognition. I watched it on YouTube and it looks cool. 

 

I'm taking a break from Rebirth. I played way too much of it. I'll beat it before DD2 in 2 weeks. 

[Biggie]

26 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

I'm only just trying to get you guys riled up in here. I'm happy that you guys are enjoying Balatro. It's quite the accomplishment for a card game to receive this type of recognition. I watched it on YouTube and it looks cool. 

 

I'm taking a break from Rebirth. I played way too much of it. I'll beat it before DD2 in 2 weeks. 

It’s the GotY. Say it. Say it godammit. 
 

 

[Biggie]

21 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

If you're having difficulty getting deep runs, here are some of my suggestions:

1)  Once you're comfortable with scoring, and how game runs -- turn speed up to 4

2)  In first small blind, you generally want to maximize cash.  Discard cards until you can score at least a Queen-High straight, or a big full house.  I usually discard all cards below a 10.  This will allow you to get the necessary 300 chips by playing one hand.

3)  You want to increase the "Mult" early on -- buy any Joker that gives you mult.

4)  You quickly want to focus on building cash -- so you can spend it on card packs and cards each turn.

5)  There are lots of "combos" of Jokers that work well together.  Grab them when you can (i.e. the Joker that gives you Mult for all sell value of other Jokers, and the Joker than gains sell value each round)

6)  You are a slave to the RNG -- don't be scared to start a new run when it isn't kind

7)  Add lots of 10+ cards, destroy low cards, (or turn them into Stone or Gold Cards)

8)  Each card can have one enhancement, one seal and one edition.  If you try to add a second enhancement to a card, you lose the first one.

9)  In later antes, the x2 mult (or other numbers) are necessary to keep growing the chips you score per hand

10)  I found the Green Deck was the easiest for my first successful run -- as I found it the easiest to earn money in the early game

11)  It sucks when you get a bad boss blind power on the 8th ante and you lose the game.  I've lost more runs here than I've won.

Great call about turning speed up to 4

[stepee]

Got this last night along with a couple other games but got lost in my new arcade racers, will try tonight!

[Biggie]

8 minutes ago, stepee said:

Got this last night along with a couple other games but got lost in my new arcade racers, will try tonight!

It’s very addicting. 

[Biggie]

Just had my best run. 13 rounds. 
 

[stepee]

oh man it’s real good 

[Biggie]

4 hours ago, stepee said:

oh man it’s real good 

It’s perfect for pick-up-and-play fun

[Amazatron]

I made it to ante 13 with a high card deck lol.

 

This game is like crack.

[stepee]

8 hours ago, Biggie said:

It’s perfect for pick-up-and-play fun

 

I got to round 15 twice last night but haven’t gotten it beat just yet. I hope this game comes to ios with cross save. Just unlocked the green deck!

[Biggie]

2 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

I got to round 15 twice last night but haven’t gotten it beat just yet. I hope this game comes to ios with cross save. Just unlocked the green deck!

It’s just a perfect game to play when you don’t feel like getting involved in a huge game. 

[stepee]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

It’s just a perfect game to play when you don’t feel like getting involved in a huge game. 

 

Or if you want to zone out for two hours while watching tv!

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 hours ago, stepee said:

 

Or if you want to zone out for two hours while watching tv!

Or, if you’re in work meetings that you don’t really need to be part of, but are forced to listen in to. 

[HardAct]

Been reading about this game! I watched the above link "what isBalatro " but I can't wrap my head around what is going on or what I am supposed to do in this game. I finally broke down and bought SF6 last night opening the doors to buying games again it seems. I love simple high replayable games on the Ally. Is this hard to understand, I mean like really here? It looks crazy to me. I'm leaning towards just buying it and seeing but I want to be able to fully understand the game without 20 hours of getting blasted?? thoughts? If it's a easy to pick up hard to master really great game I'll buy it now!

[Firewithin]

RNG gods have not been kind.  havent been able to get through a full run on any deck ive unlocked.  best i got was to 7/8 ante and the boss that got me was a one hand only lol with like 40k goal

[Moa]

5 minutes ago, HardAct said:

Been reading about this game! I watched the above link "what isBalatro " but I can't wrap my head around what is going on or what I am supposed to do in this game. I finally broke down and bought SF6 last night opening the doors to buying games again it seems. I love simple high replayable games on the Ally. Is this hard to understand, I mean like really here? It looks crazy to me. I'm leaning towards just buying it and seeing but I want to be able to fully understand the game without 20 hours of getting blasted?? thoughts? If it's an easy to pick up hard to master really great game I'll buy it now!

It takes about 5 minutes to understand. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

I've unlocked the challenge mode -- by successfully completing a run on 5 different decks.

 

My first impression of the challenges:

 

[stepee]

20 minutes ago, HardAct said:

Been reading about this game! I watched the above link "what isBalatro " but I can't wrap my head around what is going on or what I am supposed to do in this game. I finally broke down and bought SF6 last night opening the doors to buying games again it seems. I love simple high replayable games on the Ally. Is this hard to understand, I mean like really here? It looks crazy to me. I'm leaning towards just buying it and seeing but I want to be able to fully understand the game without 20 hours of getting blasted?? thoughts? If it's a easy to pick up hard to master really great game I'll buy it now!

 

It tells you how to play in like 30 seconds and that’s all you need. If you know generally how poker works you’ll be fine.

[HardAct]

   I love poker so I'll buy it on Steam for my couch/Ally time. Hoping this is really that good. It's on Steam so I guess I could get my money back if need be. I have only EVER reimbursed a game 2x in over 20 years of Steam!

[Biggie]

its EzPz @HardAct

[HardAct]

Purchased!

[TwinIon]

This game is perfect for the steam deck, though it seems like it would be great on the iPad as well.

 

My best and most fun runs so far have relied on the "+1 mult for every Tarrot card played" joker. In both runs I had that effect duplicated, and then I built up different ways to play as many as possible. Having a guaranteed 200x mult is pretty good, plus playing all those cards meant basically every card in my deck was enhanced. It's also just more fun to play as many cards as possible.

 

I just unlocked the challenges. Some of them look like a pretty good head start and some of them look pretty hard.

 

Overall the game is really great. It's simple and clever and seems like it'll have plenty of replay value.

[TheLeon]

I have a trip coming up, so I caved and bought it on Switch. Oh yeah baby, this is my shit. 

[legend]

I have zero a priori interest in this, but I feel obligated to give it a try given it's overwhelming positive reception. But it will have to wait.

[TwinIon]

I kind of wish you could see some of the score before you play the hand. Obviously RNG elements shouldn't be taken into account, but having a base number would be nice. I have a simple excel sheet that I've started putting numbers into because I wasn't really sure what the play was. Like when I have the joker that duplicates another joker, not sure if I should duplicate the effect that gives me more chips or more mult. I understand why it isn't there, but I do feel silly whipping out excel to optimize this silly card game.

 

I don't know about you all, but my "endless" runs have all ended pretty abruptly not long after they start. I've had a few runs where I knew I could sail through and "win" after Ante 3 or 4, so I'd slow play every round trying to maximize everything. I just did the challenge where you start with jokers for "every card is a face card" and "every face card has a 1 in 2 chance of paying out 1 dollar", which translated to infinite money. By the time I won nearly every card in my ~65 card deck were enhanced hearts, with about 30 of them being foil (+50 chips) +4 mult aces (a bunch with red stickers), with another 10 foil kings and ~15 +30 chip cards. My jokers gave me continually rising mults for every flush and tarrot played and +30 chips for every face card (which was all of them thanks to the challenge). I was actually struggling to play worse hands in order to trigger more effects every round, because I could easily win every round with my opening draw every time. I bought everything in the shop every round, buffing my hand types and looking for any joker with higher potential than what I had.

 

All of that and I still maxed out at something over 100k per hand, which was guaranteed every hand. So when I got to the $1M boss blind, there was no chance. My other runs where I sailed through to the "win" screen similarly ended in that crazy 300k/500k/1M section.

 

I know people have gotten some crazy scores, so I'm guessing that I just haven't unlocked some jokers that really allow for more exponential progression, because my linearly scaling methods just don't seem to cut it. Those 1M hand and 100M hand achievements seem way out of reach with what I've seen in the game so far.

 

TL:DR - I'm enjoying trying to optimize this game. There is a beautiful mix of simplicity and depth that makes Balatro's success so well deserved.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Quote

 

This morning Balatro hit a momentous milestone...

 

ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD!

 

We still have some fun things planned for the future, but for now...

 

[Best]

So you guys tired of this yet? 

[TwinIon]

I'm such an idiot. I completely didn't recognize that x2 mult was different from +2 mult. I my mind mult was already multiplicative, it didn't register that some cards actually multiply your multiple. I got my first legendary joker that required twenty something discards before it would give x5 and thought, wow, that's a high requirement for a measly 5 mult. Still, I didn't find anything better for a while and when it unlocked I realized how it worked and now I feel like a moron, but those crazy high scores now feel much more doable.

[AbsolutSurgen]

14 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I'm such an idiot. I completely didn't recognize that x2 mult was different from +2 mult. I my mind mult was already multiplicative, it didn't register that some cards actually multiply your multiple. I got my first legendary joker that required twenty something discards before it would give x5 and thought, wow, that's a high requirement for a measly 5 mult. Still, I didn't find anything better for a while and when it unlocked I realized how it worked and now I feel like a moron, but those crazy high scores now feel much more doable.

Yeah, in order to get crazy high scores, you need at least one joker that gets you extra chips, one that gets +Mult and one that gives you xMult.

Remember to put the jokers that give you xMult to the right of the ones that give you +Mult.

I haven't been spending any time on endless runs, but more on unlocking/beating all the decks in the base difficulty.  TBH, I've only played for about an hour in the last week.

[Amazatron]

58 minutes ago, best3444 said:

So you guys tired of this yet? 

 

Nope, have two more decks to unlock and loving it. Beat one challenge, and will revisit the others after as they look to be interesting.

[Keyser_Soze]

I think someone wrote into Nextlander and said they played this game for 10 hours straight.

[Best]

22 minutes ago, Amazatron said:

 

Nope, have two more decks to unlock and loving it. Beat one challenge, and will revisit the others after as they look to be interesting.

 

That's awesome. Glad this game turned out so damn good for you guys. 

[Biggie]

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

So you guys tired of this yet? 

Nah I played for a few hours before bed last night. Thought it would help with the Sunday night blues. 
 

Spoiler

It didn’t 

 

[stepee]

I don’t think it’s the kind of game design that is going to age out for people. It’s not something you just try to beat and shelve it. Its something you can play off and on over the years.

[TheLeon]

I completely suck at this game. I’ve played probably 20 runs and I think the furthest I’ve gotten is ante 7, once. This is gonna be my new Slay the Spire - a game I played for years, but never really cracked. Every time I finish a run, it feels like a total fluke.