No game this year has captured the Engadget crew’s imagination so much Balatro did, and when it came time for each employee to present their pitch Favorite games of 2024that everyone – and I mean everyone – wanted to write about Balatro. Ultimately, we decided to ask the team to write their own individual take on the game, rather than forcing everyone to compete for the chance to write about their love of the game Balatro.
My Steam Deck is a Balatro machine and I love it
My Steam deck is a Balatro Machine at this point, and no, I’m not complaining about it. I’ve taken out my Steam Deck for many games Balatro and I plan on playing it a lot more in the future, but for now, and possibly until my last breath, its main function is wildcard generation.
First, Balatro just feels good on a handheld 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 jokers, bets, achievements and stickers on your way to Completionist++. The Steam Deck is the ideal platform for these types of games because, especially when combined with a comfortable PC setup, it allows players to switch between these two states without losing progress. The mobile version of Balatro is great and the Switch version is great, but I started playing on PC and more than 500 hours later I’m hesitant to start over again on another platform.
I love making myself comfortable on the couch Balatroplaying it on the PC at my desk, using it as a distraction on long commutes, and getting some hands in it before bed. The Balatro Machine – er, I mean, Steam Deck – enables my obsession in a seamless way.
— Jessica Conditt, senior reporter
Balatro is a card game you can feel
Balatro is a game you play largely in your head. There’s a huge selection of modifier cards, each with their own effects and consequences, and you work through their permutations like you’re tinkering with a chemistry set. It’s a game with choices, all of which depend on the choices you’ve made before. Some work, most of them blow your mind.
That’s what makes Balatro captivating, but I don’t like it that much. What I like most is how tangible it is. How a digital card game actually has a noticeable effect. It’s the little one tck and shake each card as it is scored. The Donk When a wild increases your multiplier, the way the Donks Accelerate and raise the pitch as buffs and retriggers pile up. The thrrrp the refilling of the cards. The brief delay in opening a booster pack to build anticipation, the disintegration of the pack to emphasize the finality of your decision. The sound of coins colliding when you collect interest or make a purchase. The fire that burns around your score and rises when you pass the target with one hand, a dopamine hit within a dopamine hit. The way trance music gets deflated when you inevitably fail.
You are not a character in Balatro. You just be yourself, staring at cards filled with swirling colors. But all of those flourishes do a lot to draw you into that vortex, really lock you in it, and somehow give a game that’s most similar to video poker the feel of a physical place. Balatro is, among other things, a first-class example of economical sound design. The easiest way to dilute it is to play it on mute.
— Jeff Dunn, senior reporter
The real deal was the Joker stickers we earned along the way
I’m not an achievement chaser – I’m the type of person who skips uninteresting side quests and rarely replays games after completing them. The only “Platinum” game in my PlayStation collection is the PS4 version of Resogunand I 100 percent have exactly zero games on the Xbox. So why was 2024 the year I became obsessed with achieving Completionist++? Balatro?
I received the Completionist Steam achievement, which you get for discovering every card in the game, after playing the game for a month. It took another five months before I got Completionist+, a prize given to those who beat Ante 8 with any deck on Gold difficulty. The only thing left for me was the game’s hardest challenge: Competitionist++, which involves getting gold stickers on every Joker by hitting 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 wild combinations that can take you past ante 8 on any deck. Completionist++ takes away those safety nets and forces you to beat the game’s hardest level without relying on surefire strategies. However, I occasionally miss my early high score hunting days BalatroThis challenge gave the game a whole new dynamic for me as I figured out how to make a profit from wilds that I previously thought were useless.
If you’ve completed all the challenges and are wondering what to do next, Completionist++ is a challenge you should take on. Just a warning: I played for 460 hours on my PC and Steam Deck and only unlocked 961 of the game’s 1,200 stickers.
— Aaron Souppouris, Editor-in-Chief
Balatro is a deep, complex game for dirty casual gamers like me
Some of my friends and colleagues take it with them Balatro to some wild extremes. Aaron told me that he had unlocked and completed about 95 percent of the game; I’m now sitting at a meager 19 percent. Another friend regularly shares short videos of his runs accumulating hundreds of millions of points in a single hand with jokers I can’t imagine, while my best single hand is just over 3 million.
But the good thing about it? This is not discouraging; It’s a feature, not a bug. Balatro has somehow managed to be the kind of game you can sink hundreds of hours into in search of completion and mastery. Or you can do like I did and record it, play it for 30 minutes or an hour a few times a week, and then come back to it and have plenty to do when you get the itch.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to get to the point where I reach a billion points in a single hand, but my play 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 play a bender and play it for hours and then not come back to it for days or weeks and then just keep going and keep progressing. You won’t lose skills or forget your goals. It’s a casual pick-up-and-play game that also hides incredible depth, and games like this don’t come around too often.
— Nathan Ingraham, deputy editor
Balatro is an almost perfect mobile port
2024 is undoubtedly the year of Balatro. It came out of nowhere and filled our minds with dreams of flush fives and legendary Jimbos. But I think what really pushed it over the top was its launch on iOS and Android earlier this fall. Not only was the mobile version $5 less than the desktop version on Steam (or console ports), but there are no intrusive ads or additional purchases anywhere in the game. This includes all crossover card backs (e.g. those with characters from The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077 and more) and the big one upcoming update expected to be released early next year.
Additionally, there is essentially no difference in features between the mobile and desktop/console versions. Admittedly, this is largely due to the game being a relatively simple title (at least in terms of graphics). But still, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to mess this up. The game starts almost instantly, and even if you hit the antes while simultaneously moving your score deep into scientific notation, the system doesn’t bog down. Add to that a satisfying interface, support for cloud saves, multiple languages and profiles, and a high contrast option that’s great for accessibility, and you have an app that works well on virtually any device.
In fact, I would argue that foldable devices like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 are the perfect devices for Joker hunting. Their large screens seem to fit in perfectly Balatro without ever feeling cramped, which is sometimes the case with older devices with less spacious displays. Text is generally readable (though sometimes less so on small devices) and there’s plenty of room to move things around without getting in your own way. I have a few minor complaints that you can read about in my longer article Balatross Beauty on mobile devicesbut overall I’m confident I’ll get more than my money’s worth in the coming years.
— Sam Rutherford, senior reporter
