40
votes
Balatro Mobile coming to Google Play, Apple Arcade and App Store on September 26th
Link information
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- Title
- Balatro Mobile - Official Release Date Trailer
- Authors
- Playstack
- Duration
- 0:52
- Published
- Sep 5 2024
Price across App Store and Google Play is $10, and Arcade is similar to Game Pass where a bunch of games are part of the subscription. I like that both are an option.
Official FAQ
Game is out.
Myself and many other Android users are currently reporting failed transactions when attempting to purchase in the Play Store.
Thought I had an issue with my card or something. Good to know.
Seems to be a larger Play Store issue affecting many apps over the last couple of days. Seeing a few reports of this from the Play Store subreddit.
cc: @first-must-burn who replied to one of my comments in the weekly game thread about wanting to pick it up on android
Thanks!
With all the hype earlier this year, I had been putting off purchasing on PC as I expected it'd make a good mobile game and didn't want to buy it twice. Months passed after they announced their intention with mobile without an ETA, so I finally broke down last month and bought it. Just finished gold on my first deck, got past ante 11, got a 100,000,000 hand, and have just about every joker unlocked (I think I might have one left?). I've just cracked 100 hours.
It's weird, I came into it from completing my first A20H in Slay the Spire and went in expecting it to fill the same niche, just a new flavor. I'm not sure why but it didn't quite grab me at first and even now it doesn't quite excite me as much as StS. I don't know how to describe it but it feels less strategic? I think because StS has 4 distinct characters each with multiple strategies in deck build. You can grind out The Silent for a while and if you get bored switch to The Watcher for a completely different playstyle. There's a lot of randomness and options with Balatro but aside from maybe the plasma deck it's all pretty much the same jist.
I'm not sure I'd really call it an exciting or interesting game, but it is a very easy to play game. Not easy to win, mind you; easy like a good Old Fashion is easy. Easy to get started, easy to slip into the groove, easy to lose hours to. No anxiety. No real frustration. It's the Long Hike of rougelite deckbuilders. It's comfy.
Anyway, I'll be picking it up Day 1 even if I have to start from scratch. It'll be an easy way to kill time in the waiting room or during flights or on my lunch break.
I still think it's missing an x-factor. Certain roguelike loops have it; StS or Binding of Isaac have these crazy abilities, events, cards, etc that hook you off of these things radically changing how you play on a dime, and they make it feel like anything could happen. I can't tell if the jokers just aren't crazy enough or if it's a fundimental gameplay problem, but after a certain point it just feels like the only thing you get out of Balatro is crunchier math.
Not saying it's a strictly bad thing, some people just really like poker. I went in expecting the poker to go a little more off the rails, I guess.
Imo it's the opposite. My problem with the game is that most of the optimal strategies, you barely play the "poker" part. Like the best way to win is high card or pair strategies. When you play a high card build, what are you even playing in the poker section?
The amazing game of "play the highest card you have (that isn't penalized)"? Don't exactly have to be a poker master for that one. There's zero math, you just autopilot, even a 10 year old could autopilot through it. The game really is all about the jokers you pick during the rewards section.
It's honestly very little to do with poker, or the skills you use during poker, and sometimes the poker sections feel like a waste of time.
I feel like there are some jokers (especially rare and up) that do radically change how you play, though? The strats people use to get the absurdly high scores are definitely nothing like my "try my best to assemble a flush" beginner strat or actual poker. You just usually have to actually do the deck building (or, often, deck trimming) work to unlock the potential of these jokers.
No matter what you do, though, even those jokers just do something mathematically worse than another joker because the aim never changes; certain stuff is strictly better or worse because the game hinges on the math involved. (And for the most part, that just means building the best scaling joker you can get.) All the deck manipulation is neat, but when I was playing the card packs were statistically a bad choice and never felt impactful. There aren't a ton of good enablers that fill in the gaps for some of the worse strategies, or if they do they peter out after round 9 or 10.
In BoI your twitch reflexes fill in the gaps for whether a build is objectively good or bad, so outside speedrunning you can run anything and maybe get through - and that let them go nutty on the power-ups. StS could fall prey to the same problem here, but the goals felt better balance in punishment of playstyles without taking away that gap you could eek out with skill or diversity. Balatro just feels a lot more binary and simplified; every game felt pretty same-y to me no matter what I was doing, and after a while it sucked the fun out of itself.
Again, I think some people may be looking for a more straightforward method of rules and play out of it - that's totally fine, not every game needs to be a swingy slot machine. Plus it's poker, you're always at the mercy of chance. I just feel like the classic roguelikes I love bend themselves a lot more and balance craziness and skill more.
I'm not fantastic at Balatro but fwiw, Tarot cards (and, though they're more rare, Spectral cards) tend to be more effective when it comes to the deck-building mechanics. The actual deck building mechanics are often much more about removing cards from your deck or transforming cards into other things than anything else.
I agree that some stuff is strictly better or worse, but I don't really think that necessarily is a problem. Part of the fun of this type of roguelike, imo, is balancing the hypothetically best choice with how easy it is to set up in time to not lose as the blinds scale.
But different strokes for different folks, ofc. I'm not super big on most roguelikes, so the deck-building elements are what draws me to roguelike deckbuilders like this.
You will have to start from scratch, but they do have the toggle to unlock everything if you just want to play without having to jump through the hoops a second time.
will progress carry over from Steam? I want to keep grinding out stakes and finish up the last 3 Jokers I haven't unlocked, but I'm less inclined to purchase if I have to start over.
Official FAQ is up.
There may be a third party tool to import and export saves, or you could use the Balatro Mobile Maker to import the save into a bespoke version of the app that you sideload into your phone.
That reminds me that I wish that you could buy mobile games through steam. Meaning, that I wish that there were more good mobile games that weren't play to win and I could own unlike Apple Arcade or whatever.
This might be asking a lot, but is there an option in the Apple App Store for devs to put their apps/games on sale? I already own this on Steam (and love it), but not sure I want to spend another $10 to get it on mobile.
Non-zero chance I pick this up for mobile. I adore the Steam version and have played many hours on my Steam Deck.