Balatro in IOS

★★★★★

★★★★★ If you are hesitant to buy read this!

I know that this game says that it’s “Poker meets Solitaire” but that statement doesn’t do it justice. I was a little hesitant to buy the game because the preview didn’t catch my attention. I saw the reviews and decided to buy it. Upon playing, it was mostly like “Poker meets a rouge-like”to me. Each run has a type of deck you can choose (it’s still a 52 card deck) BUT the color gives you a different effect. Red gives an extra discard to your standard discard amount, blue gives you an extra turn, etc. The more you play the more crazy effects you’ll get with your decks, and your Jokers. Each run starts off like a rouge-like, No stats, everything is slow, but as time goes on you’ll get better cards, better point multipliers, and better jokers. The jokers have tons of effects that you can unlock and build into how you enjoy playing (pairs, two pairs, straight, full house, etc). I bought it yesterday and was hooked, I played for hours on end without getting bored. Plus the music is fantastic! Highly recommend playing with earbuds or with the sound on.

★★★★★ Incredibly Fun and Enjoyable! but Eats Battery

If you are into Poker or Roguelikes (Binding of Isaac for example,) you will most likely find Balatro to be a very interesting and fun. Jokers are like powerups for your deck and lead to a lot of fun interactions and interesting combos. Now with that being said, I feel the nature of how the game difficulty progresses ruins the expectation of experimentation. As to meet with the high antes you either need to set up the same powerful, but repetitive combos, or get very lucky, which leaves a very small window to mess with jokers as it becomes very quickly becomes punishing to do so. This does not ruin the game in the slightest, just my ability to explore it further. I own this game on PC as well and very much enjoy the interface changes made for mobile and I actually find myself trying to drag cards in the PC version because I’ve become accustomed to dragging them here. Highly recommend for mobile. My only gripe for mobile is for some reason, this game makes my phone very hot and eats battery very fast. Like it’s taking a LOT of processing power to play. My phone usually has a long battery life but to lose 20% or more on a single run of Balatro is kind of unfortunate. If this gets fixed, it’s an easy 5 star.

★★★★★ The same experience every time

I cannot express how often I try booting up this game, because I do really like the gameplay loop. It offers me something to do when I have absolutely nothing else to pass the time with. The facade of deck building is engaging enough that it feels like you’re progressing a little bit at a time. My main problem are the challenge levels, the bosses, whatever you want to call them. It seems like every time I boot up this game, I am offered upgrades by the shop that are immediately taken away from me by one of the boss’s conditions. Stuff like “all clubs are debuffed” and “you have to play a different hand type every round.” All of the upgrades in the game are designed around rewarding particular hands. The tarots help you duplicate cards or give you bonuses from them being played, and the planets increase the multipliers you get for specific hands. These are the only way to progress, aside from the jokers. And when you take those upgrades away, you set the player back to square one. I understand the need for challenge, since the game is incredibly basic. But to me, the rng of deck building and pulling the right cards for your hand is challenge enough. It’s not even frustrating to encounter a boss that shuts down the only combo you’ve been allowed to buy. It’s just annoying, and reminds me why I don’t play this.

★★★★★ Absolutely earns the hype!

This game is a gobsmacking innovation, on a level with Slay the Spire. “Poker meets solitaire” is a terrible description; it’s so much more than that. It’s a card based roguelike that gets everything right. It’s complex and deep, but never overwhelms you. There’s a lot going on, but the learning curve is utterly painless. You’ll know enough to win in your first few playthroughs, but you’ll discover more and more subtleties over time. As your skill improves, the challenge scales with you. There are always new goals to chase, but you are in complete control of what to try and when, and how difficult (or not) you want your game to be. And while winning is satisfying, Balatro achieves the highest virtue a roguelike can aspire to — it’s great fun even when you lose. When I saw Balatro on the PC Gamer top 10 of all time list, I thought, B.S. No card game belongs on that list. I was wrong. The universal gushing and five star reviews are totally legit. It’s the best game you never thought you’d like, and the more you play, the truer that becomes.

★★★★★ Lost hundreds of hours of progress

This game was objectively fun. It is a genius dopamine rush and quite unique. The developer clearly knows how to make a viral hit. However, the only real point to the game is to unlock things. I had played for hundreds of hours on my phone. I had nearly unlocked the full “collection” and completed 15/20 challenges. Then, I wanted to see how the game looked on the iPad. What a terrible decision. I’ve now lost everything, any and all progress. iOS Gamecenter happily logs me in and tells me I’ve already earned the majority of the achievements. Balatro thinks I’ve never unlocked a single thing and never won with a single deck. This is a game that centers entirely on unlocks and progress, but fails to store your data with any degree of reliability or replicability. I will never play this game again. Play at your own risk and, if you do, be sure to only ever play on one device. This review was posted after version 1.1.15 was released which erroneously claims “Cloud save improvements”. I also filed a bug report with the developer and received this response: “The developers are aware of the issue and are looking into why this is happening. Currently, there is not a way to restore individual profiles. In the meantime, I would suggest playing on one device.”

★★★★★ Worth every cent.

I don’t normally write reviews and I’m not usually one to be into too many mobile games or even for that matter card games but this, there’s something about it that has an addictive and rewarding effect. I think the mix of elements of tarot and it’s design seem very fun and mysterious it’s not something that you’re too unfamiliar with, but just enough mystery to keep you wanting more. From the art, the classic pixel style art in remembrance of old Solitaire on Windows XP or Windows 98 it gives almost a nostalgic vibe as well as the music, hands-down probably the most entertaining card game that isn’t ordinary or some fake casino style solitaire style mobile game that pushes ads in your face. The pace of which the game and rounds run at as well is just perfect. Get those combos and get that reward system rewarded, you know that funny little center in your brain where you just want a little more? it hits all the right spots and it keeps you going, it’s amazing. Hands-down, 10 out of 10. Five stars, 100%.

★★★★★ Fun but LOTS of frustrating bugs [Fixed]

The game is just as fun as the Steam version, but the iOS version has tons of save file flakiness. Winning unseeded runs not counting for progress, unlocks disappearing, having to re-click the (!) in the unlocks repeatedly… would be 5 stars if it worked like the Steam version does! Edited 2 stars to 1: The bugs just make this unusable. Some of the glitchiness I’ve encountered: Profile name keeps reverting to P1 (although renaming P2 sticks.) Winning runs not recorded. Constantly spammed with notices that I have unlocked the Blue Deck… while playing the Blue Deck. Spammed with notices that I’ve unlocked jokers even after unlocking those jokers. Cards I’ve played not showing up in Collection. Cards in Collection keep having a (!) put on them to show that they’re new, even after tapping them multiple times. Doing that one thing enough times to unlock that secret thing didn’t unlock it. Cards and tags that I’ve played not showing in the Collection. Blinds not showing up in Collection. Tried deleting app in order to re-download it and see if it would fix things; the pop up notice said that my cloud save would not be deleted… but my cloud save was deleted and I lost all progress. Edit 1 star to 5; Updated iOS and all apps, including the Friends of Jimbo 3 patch, and now the save file appears to be working correctly! Not sure which bug it was since they both updated at the same time, but I can finally play.