Mario Bautista
I said I wasn’t going to download it.
Earlier this year, I became obsessed with Balatro. The hit poker roguelike got its hooks into me fast; I racked up 40 hours in the blink of an eye. I was sneaking another round in any chance I could, and it was pretty much the only thing I brought on flights for months. I knew that there would be a day where developer LocalThunk would bring it to mobile devices and I feared what that could do to me. But when the announcement finally came, I felt a surprising moment of restraint. I’d already sunk plenty of time into it and just didn’t feel the need to start it again on a new platform. I was free.
That is, until I caved and downloaded it just days after release. Now I’m playing all over again, but I can’t say that I’m mad about it. As I suspected, Balatro is the perfect mobile game, one that’s become my trusty companion during football Sundays. It’s an easy recommendation to anyone who likes to game on their phone — just make sure you have nothing important to do in the next few weeks before hitting download.
Balatro is a deckbuilding poker rouguelike that launched in February to immediate critical and commercial success. The core loop has players playing poker hands to earn chips. A run is split up into multiple antes that each have a chip total that needs to be reached in a few hands. Each hand has its own base chip value and multiplier, with plays like royal flushes being incredibly lucrative. The twist is that players can buy upgrades between each ante, from planet cards that will upgrade the base value of hands to tarot cards that can give specific cards buffs.
The big hook comes in the form of jokers, buyable passive cards that completely change a run and unlock Balatro’s roguelike depth. One joker might give you more chips if your hand contains a pair. Another will give you a 3x multiplier on your last played hand in a turn. That’s where the deckbuilding fun comes in. With smart planning and spending, you can build an entire run around only playing simple pairs or high cards. There are a wealth of synergies to be discovered, and you’ll have trouble putting it down once you start to find them.
Unsurprisingly, that hook is a remarkable fit for mobile. The Nintendo Switch version was already the best way to play thanks to touch controls that made it easy to select cards and buy buffs. That works just as well on a mobile screen, if not better. Perk cards are now bought and used by dragging them to specific parts of the screen rather than hitting buttons. That’s an effective quality-of-life boost, as I often find myself hitting the wrong button on a controller and accidentally selling cards I mean to use.
There are few, if any, downsides to playing on mobile. I worried that the UI would be too crammed on a phone screen, but it’s all perfectly legible. Perhaps the only “problem” is that it’s the kind of game that will eat your battery before you even realize it considering how easy it is to get sucked into a multi-hour session. I’ve mostly been playing it while I watch football games in the background and find myself having to continually stop to charge my phone. That’s kind of a “me problem,” though.
If you’ve yet to play Balatro, the mobile version is the perfect excuse to jump in. It’s more or less a definitive version of one of 2024’s best games and a roguelike that’s sure to be influential. You can get it on Android or iOS for $10, and it’s included as part of Apple Arcade at no extra cost (that’s the version I’m playing, though be warned that you’ll likely lose your data if it ever leaves the service). You can both thank and curse me later.
