Poker With Extra Rules?

[Huge Beard Guy]

I've been curious about Balatro for a while and I've got a quick question >>> gameplay wise, is Balatro at it's core a game of poker with alternative rules thrown into the mix?

[El Mythical 23 k.s.c.]

Its great just buy it. You make poker hands i.e. two pair, flush, etc but everything else is rogue-lite boosting and synergies. I just got this morning.

[RazzberryMocha]

Really, the only similarity between poker and Balatro gameplay-wise is the playable hands (flushes, straights, full houses, etc.). The main premise of balatro are the jokers which passively change how you will play. Some may score you extra points if you play a flush or will score extra points for every continuous hand played. You can also change aspects of your deck such as adding/removing cards, changing ranks of cards, etc.
If you are interested in card games I’d highly recommend this one. Although there isn’t a demo, you can refund the game if you have under 2 hours of playtime.

[ْSmoke™]

balatro just takes the basic poker hands thats it, the rest of the game depends on jokers. if someone with no actual experience at poker played this he will do just fine.

[The Snopingasusual]

To be quick, this game is mostly about optimising your score through equipable jokers that push you towards certains playstyles (hands type, suits, rank) while trying to "cheat" your way towards those playstyles by making it more likely to be played (by modifying your cards and adding new ones to your draw pile).

[Razör]

It's better

[malogoss]

Balatro is as close to poker as Super Mario is close to plumbing. Sure, there are pipes in Super Mario.

[Xaelon]

This game borrows basic concepts from Poker (a deck of cards, drawing cards, discarding to get better hands, and the traditional poker hands themselves) but its really more about using the various things you can buy between stages improve your chances of scoring enough points to move on.

Cards in this game have a chip value (a Ten for example gives 10 chips) and each hand has a multiplier. Higher ranked cards + higher scoring hand = more chips.

Except.....this game also has 'Jokers' which conditionally boost those values (chips and multiplier). There are jokers that only effect face cards, 4s or 10s, straights, two pair, etc. You can have up to 5 jokers (normally) and all of these bonuses stack. So the goal is simply to assemble a set of jokers that boosts a particular poker hand as much as possible while using the shop to add or remove cards from your deck.

I say "simply" but you never know what the shop will give you. That's the challenge of the game.

Do you take the chance and buy that joker that will pay off later if you get something else?
Or do you take the safe, but lower scoring option instead?
Or maybe just save your money in the hope that the next shop has better stuff.

That's the game in a nutshell.

And if you can't score enough points to move on? Oh well. You probably unlocked some new Jokers to mess around with. Go try again.

In Poker the highest scoring hand is a royal flush. In Balatro, it might be two pair, or 5 jacks. It all depends on what you buy during a run.