No game this year captured the imagination of the Engadget team as much as Balatro It did, and when it came time for each staff member to present their favorite games of 2024, everyone, and I mean everyone, wanted to write about Balatro. In the end, instead of forcing everyone to fight for the opportunity to write about their love of the game, we decided to ask the team to write their own individual vision. Balatro.
My Steam Deck is a Balatro machine and I love it
My Steam Deck is a Balatro machine right now, and no, I'm not complaining about this. I've used my Steam Deck for many games before Balatro and I plan to play a lot more on it in the future, but for now and potentially until I take my last breath, its main function is wildcard generation.
First of all, Balatro It just feels good on a portable device. It's the kind of game you can play passively while watching TV or listening to a podcast, or with intense concentration as you try to collect wildcards, bets, achievements, and stickers on the way to Completionist++. The Steam Deck is the ideal platform for this type of game because, especially in combination with a comfortable PC setup, it allows players to flow between these two states without losing progression. The mobile version of Balatro is great and the Switch version is excellent, but I started playing on PC and, over 500 hours later, I'm reluctant to start again on any other platform.
I love cuddling on the couch with Balatroplay it on my desktop PC, use it as a distraction on long trips, and give it a few hands before bed. He Balatro Machine, uh, I mean, Steam Deck, enables my obsession in a perfect way.
— Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter
Balatro is a card game that you can feel.
Balatro It's a game you play mostly in your head. There's a giant variety of modifier cards, each with their own effects and consequences, and you work through their permutations like you're playing with a chemistry kit. It's a game of decisions, all of which depend on the decisions you've made before. Some work, most blow up in your face.
This is what it does Balatro attractive, but it's not what I like the most. What I like most is how tangible it is. How a digital card game makes an impact. is the little one tock and shake each card when it is scored. He donkey When a wild increases your multiplier, the way donkeys Accelerates and pitches as the buffs and reactivators accumulate. He thrrrp of the deck reorganization. The brief delay in opening a booster pack to build anticipation, how the pack disintegrates to emphasize the finality of your decision. The sound of coins clashing when you collect interest or buy something. The fire that burns and rises around your score when you've passed the goal in one hand, a dopamine hit within a dopamine hit. The way trancy music takes the wind out of you when you inevitably fail.
You are not a character in Balatro. It's just you, looking at cards placed against swirling colors. However, all of these flourishes go a long way toward sucking you into that vortex, really locking you into it, and somehow giving a game that feels more like video poker a sense of physical place. Balatro is, among many things, an A-1 example of economical sound design. The easiest way to dilute it is to play it quietly.
—Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter
The real Balatro were the wild card stickers we earned along the way.
I'm not an achievement hunter; I'm the type of person who skips uninteresting side quests and rarely replays games after finishing them. The only “Platinum” game in my PlayStation collection is the PS4 version of Resogunand I have 100 percent exactly zero games on Xbox. So why was 2024 the year I became obsessed with achieving Completionist++ in Balatro?
I received the Steam Completionist achievement, which is earned by uncovering all the cards in the game, after a month with the game. It took me another five months to get Completionist+, awarded to those who beat Ante 8 with each deck on gold difficulty. The only thing left for me to do was the hardest challenge in the game: Competitionist++, which consists of getting gold stickers on each wild card by beating Ante 8 on gold difficulty with each of them active.
At the time of writing, Completionist++ is still a distant dream. It's easy to feel like you've mastered the game after beating Completionist+; There are simple combinations of wild cards that can get you over Ante 8 with every deck. Completionist++ removes those safety nets from you, forcing you to beat the hardest level in the game without relying on foolproof strategies. While I occasionally miss my high score chasing my early days with BalatroThis challenge has given the game a whole new dynamic for me, as I figure out how to get a win from wild cards I previously considered useless.
If you've beaten the stakes and are wondering what to do next, Completionist++ is a challenge worth considering. Just a warning: I've played for 460 hours on my PC and Steam Deck, and I've only unlocked 961 of the game's 1,200 stickers.
— Aaron Souppouris, executive editor
Balatro is a deep and complex game for casual players like me.
Some of my friends and coworkers are taking Balatro to some wild extremes. Aaron told me that he unlocked it and completed about 95 percent of the game; Meanwhile, I sit at a measly 19 percent. Another friend regularly shares quick videos of his careers in which he accumulates hundreds of millions of points in a single hand with wild cards that I can't understand, while my best hand sits at just over 3 million.
But the good? This is not discouraging; It's a feature, not a bug. Balatro It has somehow managed to be the type of game that you can spend hundreds of hours in an all-out quest to complete and master. Or you can do what I do and pick it up, play for 30 minutes or an hour a few times a week, and get back to it with plenty to do when the itch hits.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get to the point where I can get a billion points in a single hand, but my gaming time is limited and I usually choose to spend it on the PS5. But one of the great joys of Balatro is that you can go on a bender and play it for hours, and then not do it again for days or weeks, and then just pick it up and keep progressing. You won't lose any skills or forget your goals. It's a casual game that's easy to learn and also hides incredible depth, and games like that don't come around too often.
—Nathan Ingraham, Associate Editor
Balatro is an almost perfect mobile port
2024 is undoubtedly the year of Balatro. He came out of nowhere to fill our heads with dreams of flush fives and legendary Jimbos. But I think what really made it stand out was when it launched on iOS and Android earlier this fall. Not only was the mobile version $5 less than the desktop edition on Steam (or console ports), but there are no intrusive ads or additional purchases anywhere in the game. That includes all crossed card backs (such as those featuring characters from the witcher, Cyberpunk 2077 and more) and the big <a target="_blank" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://x.com/balatrogame/status/1821184855876804841?s=46″ rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:forthcoming update;cpos:4;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>next update which will be out early next year.
Other than that, there is essentially no difference in features between the mobile and desktop/console versions. Of course, that's largely because the game is a relatively simple title (at least in terms of graphics). But still, you'd be surprised how easy it is to make a mistake. The game starts up almost instantly and even when you're beating the ante while bringing your score into scientific notation, the system doesn't bog down. Add a satisfying interface, cloud save support, multiple languages and profiles, plus a high contrast option that's great for accessibility, and you've got an app that works well on virtually any device.
In fact, I would say that foldable devices like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 are the perfect devices for wild card hunting. Their large screens seem like a perfect combination for Balatro without feeling cramped, which sometimes happens on older devices with less spacious screens. Text is generally easy to read (although sometimes less so on small devices) and there's plenty of open space to move things around without getting in the way. I have a few minor complaints which you can read about in my longer article on Balatro beauty on mobile, but overall I'm sure I'll get more than my money's worth in the years to come.
— Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter
