No game this year has captured the imagination of the Engadget team like this one Balatro did, and when it came time for each employee to submit their favorite games of 2024, everyone – and I mean everyone – wanted to write about them Balatro. In the end, instead of forcing everyone to fight for the chance to write about their passion for the game, we instead decided to ask the team to write their own story. Balatro.
My Steam Deck is a Balatro machine and I love it
My Steam Deck is Balatro machine at this point, and no, I’m not complaining about this. I have broken my Steam Deck with many games before Balatro and I plan to play more in it in the future, but for now and maybe until I take my last breath, its main task is the generation of comics.
First of all, Balatro it feels great on a handheld device. It’s the kind of game you can play passively while watching TV or listening to a podcast, or get really focused as you try to collect jokes, stakes, achievements and stickers on your way to Completionist++. Steam Deck is the ideal platform for this type of game, because, especially when combined with a comfortable PC setup, it allows players to flow between these two regions without losing continuity. The mobile version of Balatro is rad and the Switch version is peachy, but I started playing on PC and, more than 500 hours later, I hesitate to start again on any other platform.
I absolutely love curling up on the sofa BalatroI play it on the PC at my desk, use it as a distraction on long drives, and put in a few hands before bed. I Balatro The machine – uh, I mean, the Steam Deck – powers my anxiety
– Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter
Balatro is a card game you can feel
Balatro it’s a game you play a lot in your head. There is a large series of conversion cards, each with their own effects and effects, and you work with their permissions like you are processing a chemistry kit. It’s a game of decisions, all of which depend on the decisions you’ve made before. Some work, most are in your face.
This is what you do Balatro engaging, but not what I like about it. What I love most is how tangible it is. How does a digital playing card game make any sense at all. It’s small tck and shake each card if you score. I donkey where the joke comes to your multiplier, in the way i donkeys hurry up and level up as the buffs and retriggers stack up. I trrp for deck renovation. The short delay when you open the booster pack to increase the anticipation, how the pack disintegrates to emphasize the finality of your decision. The sound of coins colliding when you collect interest or buy something. A burning and rising fire surrounds your score when you’ve achieved a goal with one hand, a dopamine hit within a dopamine hit. The way the spirit comes out of trance music when you inevitably fail.
You are not a character Balatro. It’s just you, staring at the cards set against the rotating suits. Yet all of these flourishes go a long way towards sucking you into that vortex, really locking you into it, somehow giving the game a very video poker-like feel to the physical environment. Balatro among many things, the A-1 is an example of economical sound design. The easiest way to clean it is to play it quietly.
– Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter
The real Balatro were the comic stickers we earned along the way
I’m not an achievement hunter — I’m the type of person who skips interesting side quests and rarely plays games after completing them. The only “Platinumed” game in my PlayStation collection is the PS4 version Resogunand I have zero games that are 100 percent on Xbox. Why then, it was the year 2024 that I focused on achieving Completionist++ Balatro?
I got the Completionist Steam achievement, which you get by getting every card in the game, after a month with the game. It took me another five months to get the Completionist+, which is awarded to those who beat Ante 8 per deck on gold difficulty. The only thing left for me to do was the game’s hardest challenge: Competitionist++, which consisted of getting gold stickers from every comic by beating Ante 8 with the gold difficulty of each of them being active.
As of this writing, Completionist++ is still a distant dream. It’s easy to feel like you’ve won the game after defeating the Completionist+; There are simple comic combinations that can take you past Ante 8 with each deck. Completionist++ strips those safety nets away from you, forcing you to beat the game’s hardest levels without relying on sure-fire tactics. While sometimes I remember my high points of chasing the first days with Balatrothis challenge gave the game a whole new energy for me, as I found a way to make victories over players I previously considered useless.
If you’ve passed all the stakes and are wondering what to do next, Completionist++ is the challenge you should set yourself. Just a word of warning: I’ve played 460 hours across my PC and Steam Deck, and I’ve only unlocked 961 of the game’s 1,200 stickers.
– Aaron Souppouris, Senior Editor
Balatro is a deep, complex game for dirty people like me
Some of my friends and colleagues are taking it Balatro in some bad situations. Aaron told me he opened and finished about 95 percent of the game; I’m currently sitting at 19%. Another friend often shares quick videos from his runs where he racked up hundreds of millions of points in one hand with Jokers that I can’t understand, while my best single hand sits at just over three million.
A good thing though? This is not discouraged; a feature, not a bug. Balatro It has somehow managed to be the kind of game that you can sink hundreds of hours into in a perfect quest to complete and master. Or you can do like I do and pick it up, play for 30 minutes or an hour a few times a week, then come back to it and have more to do when you get the itch.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to get to the point where I single-handedly take a billion points, but my gaming time is limited and I usually choose to spend it on the PS5. But one of the great joys of Balatro that you can go into a bender and play it for hours, then not come back to it for days or weeks, and then just pick it up and keep improving. You won’t lose any skills or forget your goals. It’s a casual, collect-and-play game that hides incredible depth, and games like that don’t come around often.
— Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor
Balatro is an almost perfect mobile port
2024 is undoubtedly the year of Balatro. Our heads were filled with dreams of the hottest stars and celebrities. But I think the biggest highlight was when it launched on iOS and Android earlier this fall. Not only did the mobile version cost $5 less than the desktop version on Steam (or the console ports), but there are no intrusive ads or additional purchases anywhere in the game. That includes all the crossover cardbacks (like the ones with characters from them A witch, Cyberpunk 2077 and so on) and an upcoming major update coming out early next year.
Furthermore, there is practically no difference in features between the mobile and desktop/console version. Admittedly, that’s due in large part to the fact that the game is a light title (at least in terms of graphics). But even then, you’d be surprised how easy it is to waste. The game starts quickly and even if you are smashing ants while pushing your score to the depths of scientific notices, the system is not stuck. Throw in a satisfying interface, support for cloud storage, multiple languages and profiles and a high-contrast option that’s great for accessibility, and you have an app that plays well on almost any device.
In fact, I would argue that foldables like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 are the most suitable devices for hunting jokes. Their large screens sound very similar Balatro without feeling cramped, which sometimes happens in older gadgets with displays that don’t have a lot of space. The text is generally easy to read (though sometimes not on smaller devices) and there’s plenty of open space to push things without getting in your way. I have some minor complaints which you can read about in my long piece This is Balatro’s place beauty on mobile devices, but overall I’m sure I’ll get more than my money’s worth for years to come.
— Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter
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