No match this year captured the imagination of Engadget staff more than Baratolo. When it came time for staff members to pitch their favorite games of 2024, everyone, and I mean everyone, wanted to write about Balatolo. In the end, rather than have everyone fight for the chance to write about their love for the game, we decided to have the team write their personal thoughts on Baratolo.
My steam deck is a Baratro machine and I love it
My Steam deck at the moment is a Baratro machine, and I’m not complaining about it. I broke my Steam deck for a bunch of games before Baratolo, and I plan to play a lot more games in the future, but for now and probably until I take my last breath, its main A unique feature is joker generation.
First of all, Balatro is comfortable to operate on a handheld device. This is the kind of game you can play passively while watching TV or listening to a podcast, or intently trying to collect jokers, stakes, achievements, and stickers on your way to Completionist++. The Steam deck is an ideal platform for this type of game, as it allows players to move back and forth between these two states without losing progress, especially when combined with a comfortable PC setup. The mobile version of Ballatro is great and the Switch version is great, but I started playing it on PC and now, over 500 hours later, I can’t bring myself to start playing it again on any other platform.
I love curling up on the couch listening to Ballatro, playing it on my desk PC, using it as a distraction during long commutes, or just doing a little work on it before bed. The Baratro machine (i.e. the steam deck) fulfills my obsession in a seamless way.
— Jessica Condit, Senior Reporter
Baratoro is a card game that you can experience
Baratro is a game that you play mainly in your head. There are a huge number of modifier cards, each with their own effects and results, and you explore their permutations like tinkering with a chemistry kit. This is a game of decision making and everything depends on the decisions you made earlier. Some work, but most blow up in your face.
This is what makes Baratolo so appealing, but it’s not my favorite thing about it. What I like most is how specific it is. How does a digital card game make an impact? It’s the little tck and shake that each card does when scored. Donk as Joker adds to his multiplier, and how Donk speeds up and pitches up as buffs and retriggers stack up. The excitement of reshuffling the deck. A short delay when opening a booster pack builds anticipation, and how the pack collapses emphasizes the finality of the decision. The sound of coins hitting each other when collecting interest or purchasing something. When you cross the finish line with one hand, the fire blazing around the score, the dopamine hit within the dopamine hit. How the air gets sucked out of trance music when it inevitably fails.
You are not a character in Baratolo. You’re the only one staring at the cards set against a swirling background of colors. But all of these flourishes go a long way toward sucking you into its vortex, really trapping you inside it, and giving a sense of physical place to a game that somehow most closely resembles video poker . Balatro is, above all, an A-1 example of economical sound design. The easiest way to dilute it is to play it on mute.
— Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter
The real baratro was the joker sticker I got along the way.
I’m not an achievement hunter. I’m the type of person who skips uninteresting side quests and rarely replays the game after finishing them. One of the games that went “platinum” in my PlayStation collection is the PS4 version of Resogun. Xbox has 100% zero games. So why did I become obsessed with completing Completionist++ in Balatro in 2024?
A month after starting the game, I received the Completionist Steam achievement. This achievement is earned by discovering all the cards in the game. It took me another 5 months to get Completionist+. Completionist+ is awarded to those who beat Ante 8 with all decks on Gold difficulty. The one thing that stuck with me was the game’s hardest challenge, Competitionist++. This involves earning gold stickers on all Jokers by beating Ante 8 on Gold difficulty with each Joker active.
As of this writing, Completionist++ is still a distant dream. Completing Completionist+ will help you feel like you’ve mastered the game. Every deck has a simple joker combination that can beat an ante of 8. Completionist++ strips these safety nets away from you, forcing you to complete the game’s most difficult levels without relying on solid strategy. I sometimes miss my early days of chasing high scores in Ballatro, but this challenge gave me a whole new dynamic and I found a way to generate victory from jokers that I previously thought were useless. Ta.
If you’ve survived all the risks and are wondering what to do next, Completionist++ is a challenge worth setting yourself. A word of warning: I’ve played for 460 hours on PC and Steam decks, and have only unlocked 961 of the game’s 1,200 stickers.
— Aaron Supulis, Editor-in-Chief
Balatro is a deep and complex game for filthy casuals like me
Some of my friends and colleagues are taking Baratolo in a radical direction. Aaron told me he had unlocked it and completed about 95 percent of the game. I, on the other hand, am only at 19 percent. Another friend regularly shares quick videos of his single-handed runs with Jokers that netted him hundreds of millions of points. I don’t understand, but my best single hand is just over 3 million points.
But is that a good thing? This is not discouraging. It’s a feature, not a bug. Balatro somehow manages to be the kind of game you can sink hundreds of hours into, with a relentless focus on completion and mastery. Or you can do what I do and pick up the game, play for 30 minutes or an hour a few times a week, and come back when you’re frustrated and have more to do.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to get to the point where I can earn a billion points in one hand, but my gaming time is limited and I usually choose to spend it on my PS5. But one of the great joys of Balatro is that you can play for hours with a bender and then just pick it up and continue making progress without having to come back for days or weeks. Never lose your skills or forget your goals. It’s a casual, pick-up-and-play game, but it also has incredible depth, and games like it don’t come around very often.
— Nathan Ingraham, Associate Editor
Balatro is a near-perfect mobile port
2024 is definitely the year of Balatro. It came out of nowhere and filled our heads with dreams of Flash Five and the legendary Jimbo. But I think what really grabbed our attention was when it was released on iOS and Android earlier this fall. Not only is the mobile version priced $5 less than the desktop version on Steam (or console ports), but there are no intrusive ads or extra purchases anywhere in the game. This includes all crossover cardbacks (such as those featuring characters from The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077), as well as future major updates scheduled for early next year.
Furthermore, there is essentially no difference in functionality between the mobile version and the desktop/console version. Granted, that’s mostly because the game is a relatively simple title (at least in terms of graphics). But even so, you’d be surprised how easily it can be messed up. The game launches almost instantly, and the system never bogs down, even when you’re pushing your scores deep into scientific notation and breaking the ante. Throw in a satisfying interface, cloud save support, multiple languages and profiles, and accessible high-contrast options, and you’ve got an app that works great on almost 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. The large screen feels like a perfect match for the Balatro without feeling cramped, which sometimes happens with older gadgets that don’t have very wide displays. The text is generally easy to read (though it can be difficult to read on smaller devices), and there’s plenty of open space to work without getting in the way. There are a few small complaints, as you can read in my long article about the beauty of Balatro on mobile devices, but overall I think you will get more than your money’s worth for many years to come. I’m sure.
— Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter
