its a poker-themed roguelike deckbuilder. sort of like slay the spire but with playing cards. jokers give effects and theres tarot cards, planet cards, spectral cards and so on and your goal is to get more and more poker chips through chaining things together or adding effects, playing different strategies. its really fun. its rather addictive once you get going

[–] Traegert@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I like roguelikes and deckbuilders, and I LOVE slay the spire but I'm pretty ambivalent on poker. I've had my eye on this but is it just "poker but a little quirky" or would it be worth my time as a non poker fan?

[–] LyD@lemmy.ca 6 points 7 months ago

I love STS and I've played ~6h of Balatro.

It isn't clicking with me like STS did. STS has tons of flavour and variety, but Balatro's main flavour is "poker" with some surrealism on top. The gameplay mostly has you staring at poker cards and thinking about how to stack point multipliers with jokers. It felt pretty monotonous to me after a while.

Balatro is definitely fun and worth its price. Give it a shot if you like STS. I just don't think it's the second coming of STS like a lot of people have been saying.

[–] Marighost@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago

I've never played a single game of poker IRL and I have 50+ hours in Balatro. It's good.

[–] alexiascylding@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 7 months ago

ive never played poker in my life and i love it