Anyone play this game? The video on steam doesn't really give me an idea of how to play, it just shows a poker hand and the player clicks on a bunch of jokers?

[–] alexiascylding@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] coffee_whatever@lemmy.tf 4 points 7 months ago

Here's one of many streams Aliensrock did Balatro is a roguelite so it means you've gotta collect some form of items, in case of Balatro it's jokers, tarot or planet cards and more, to make yourself better until there comes a point where you lose and start from scratch but with new things unlocked like other decks or challenges.

[–] snail@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

You make scoring hands from your deck and try to clear a threshold of X points within Y hands, discarding a bad hand only up to Z times. Jokers change gameplay and scoring rules, and making good use of them is essential to beating blinds past the first boss round.

It's easy to lose track of time while playing