NINTENDO SWITCH: Sorry. Can’t. BALATRO. Bye. (2024)
DORKSIDE’S JOURNAL. MARCH 22ND, 2024: It has been 3 weeks since this…card game was downloaded onto my Nintendo Switch. And even after already plugging in roughly 70 hours of playtime, a full understanding of the core gameplay mechanics continues to unravel before me. What began as an innocent curiosity evolved into an uncontrollable habit which has now spiraled into full blown obsession.
My child looks up and shouts "Please! Stop playing Balatro!"... and I look down and whisper "no.”
At first glance, this is the kind of game that I would typically scroll right past on the eshop without batting an eyelash. My history with card playing has pretty much been exclusively restricted to Rummy 500 while camping or during a power outage. Then to toss in the words “deckbuilding” and “blahblahblah-like” and whoa, no thank you I’m not that type of nerd.
But Balatro here is quite the clever little play on poker, offering a flat out exhilarating gameplay experience. Essentially the point is to achieve a set number of chips in each round by powering up your deck with various Joker cards. These offer multipliers and bonuses to hike up the points you earn (kinda like Pinball). In addition, you can also alter individual cards by applying all sorts of strengths from Tarot and Planet cards. There is seemingly no end to the combinations you can create and unlocking and discovering cards that work best with your instinctive play style is really just the beginning, just the hook to get you coming back for more. And let me tell you, that hook sinks in quick and it won’t be long before you are racking up chips in the triple digits.
The presentation side is simple yet charming with some great designs on the various Joker cards reflecting their individual abilities. And they even allow you to make the game look “pixel perfect” or a bit more smoothed out if you like, something you often see in releases of games from the 8-16 bit era. The music is interesting because it’s just one track on a loop which you’d think would become tiresome but there’s something kinda hypnotic about it and I haven’t once played with the volume off. But the audio effects really need to be singled out for praise because they are quite pleasing to the ear. There’s kind of a similarity to the way it sounds in Luigi’s Mansion when you’re vaccuming up all of the coins and cash. The whole thing just feels good.
There’s so much game to explore, with so much to learn that it boggles the mind. I can’t even count how many “OHHHH!” moments there have been, each of them totally altering my next approach, constantly refreshing the experience. And playing this with my better half has been the icing on the cake as she has become just as hooked. We often share notes on tips we’ve discovered or new cards we came across or alternate ways to play that hadn’t occurred to us. Isn’t that sweet? I’ll put it this way, after years of being together, it is the first time I’ve walked into the living room to see that she figured out how to turn the Switch on and get a game going by herself.
That is some crazy shit.
It isn’t often that you come across reviewers and reputable gaming sites tossing around “Game of the Year” to many titles outside of the big budget triple A action/adventure genres. Especially only 3 months in! But in the case of Balatro, that is far from hyperbole. What we’ve got here is a classic example of how a little indie developed title can become a huge success through truly clever gameplay and good old fashioned word of mouth (As of this writing, one millions copies of the game have already been purchased across multiple platforms, good for them!).
See that tumbleweed drifting by? Hear those crickets? That’s what the complete lack of any form of important productivity looks and sounds like these last few weeks. It would seem that I no longer own a Nintendo Switch, but a Balatro playing machine.
10/10
Balatro is available as a Direct Download from the Nintendo eShop for $14.99
“Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.” ~ Steven Wright
