Balatro Wiki

Balatro

Balatro is a 2024 poker roguelike deckbuilder created by solo developer LocalThunk and published by Playstack. Each run is a climb through eight Antes of escalating score requirements, where the player plays and discards poker hands from a standard 52-card deck and every hand scores as Chips multiplied by Mult. The twist is the Joker line: up to five Joker cards modify the scoring rules outright, and the whole game is built around stacking, multiplying and retriggering their effects. Between rounds the shop sells Jokers, Tarot cards, Planet cards, Spectral cards, Booster packs and Vouchers, funded by an interest-bearing money economy. Fifteen decks, eight Stakes and twenty Challenge runs, plus seeded runs and an Endless mode, give the small rule set an unusually deep ceiling, and the game shipped across PC, consoles and mobile within a single year.

• Chips Times Mult Scoring: Every poker hand scores Chips multiplied by Mult, and the entire game is about pushing either half of that equation. Base hand values come from the poker hand type and the ranks of the cards played, while Jokers, card enhancements, seals and editions stack on top.
• Jokers: Up to five Joker cards sit above the play area and rewrite the rules, adding flat Mult, multiplying it, retriggering cards, generating money, or copying another Joker's effect. They come in Common, Uncommon, Rare and Legendary rarities, and most runs are decided by which Jokers appear and how they combine.
• Consumables and Booster Packs: Tarot cards enhance or transform playing cards, Planet cards level up a poker hand's base Chips and Mult, and Spectral cards trade hand size or card destruction for powerful effects. They arrive through Booster packs bought in the shop and through Joker effects that generate them each round.
• Antes, Blinds and Boss Blinds: Each Ante contains a Small Blind, a Big Blind and a Boss Blind, and skipping the small blinds for a Tag is a real strategic option. Boss Blinds apply a rule-breaking restriction for one round, from debuffing a whole suit to cutting hands or discards.
• Money and the Shop Economy: Beating a Blind pays out, unspent money earns interest up to a cap, and the shop sells Jokers, packs, rerolls and Vouchers. Vouchers are permanent per-run upgrades that expand shop slots, consumable slots, hand size, discards or discount prices.
• Decks, Stakes and Challenges: Fifteen decks change the starting conditions, from an extra discard or hand to the suit-thinned Checkered deck and the chip-mult balancing Plasma deck. Eight Stakes layer escalating difficulty modifiers, and twenty Challenge runs present fixed decks, Jokers and rulesets.