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Balatro is the best deck builder since Slay The Spire.
- Thread starter FunkMiller
- Start date
bender
What time is it?
Won a round with Red and Yellow Decks today.
Tip:
Not sure how this avoided me you can rearrange the jokers in your joker slots, the cards in your hand, and the random cards for tarot draws which is particularly useful when you are utilizing the tarot copy, the jokers that rely on the joker(s) they are next to.
Glass cards have a chance of breaking when played but it also gives positive attributes. Not sure what you mean by multi-colored but cards can be applied with a property to affect + or x your multiplier.
Tip:
Not sure how this avoided me you can rearrange the jokers in your joker slots, the cards in your hand, and the random cards for tarot draws which is particularly useful when you are utilizing the tarot copy, the jokers that rely on the joker(s) they are next to.
Glass cards have a chance of breaking when played but it also gives positive attributes. Not sure what you mean by multi-colored but cards can be applied with a property to affect + or x your multiplier.
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TheStam
Member
I enjoy it a lot it's one of the better ones since Slay the Spire. This might come off as a rant, I'm a bit of a fan boy here who has come to the realisation that nothing will ever compare to Slay the Spire. Build variety and especially balance is just amazing in the masterpiece that is StS and I honestly believe it's one of the best games of all time. It's as close to a perfect game system as you can expect to see. No wonder there hasn't been a successor yet, how do you ever follow up on it.
I've played so many StS-likes by now.. Cobalt Core, Darkest Dungeon 2, Griftlands, Astrea, Roguebook, Nowhere Prophet, Alina of the Arena, Tainted Grail, Across the Obelisk, Inkbound, Monster Train.. Many of them are great fun, but I tend to drop them after 30-60 hours or so. Monster train is my favorite, but I still play Slay the Spire after almost 1000 hours and runs can still feel fresh and unique.
At this point I feel like there won't be a new Slay the Spire just like there never was a "new Tetris" .
Anyways rant over, but I agree that Balatro is a great game. I am playing it a lot the last few days and there are some fun synergies you can play with and I'm sure there's a lot still for me to discover. I'm definitely enjoying it. It's still early days at only 10 hours in, but I'm wondering a bit about balance. My impression is that going for flush or full house seems like the thing to do. Is there even a point to go for pair or high card not to mention stuff like straight flush.
I've played so many StS-likes by now.. Cobalt Core, Darkest Dungeon 2, Griftlands, Astrea, Roguebook, Nowhere Prophet, Alina of the Arena, Tainted Grail, Across the Obelisk, Inkbound, Monster Train.. Many of them are great fun, but I tend to drop them after 30-60 hours or so. Monster train is my favorite, but I still play Slay the Spire after almost 1000 hours and runs can still feel fresh and unique.
At this point I feel like there won't be a new Slay the Spire just like there never was a "new Tetris" .
Anyways rant over, but I agree that Balatro is a great game. I am playing it a lot the last few days and there are some fun synergies you can play with and I'm sure there's a lot still for me to discover. I'm definitely enjoying it. It's still early days at only 10 hours in, but I'm wondering a bit about balance. My impression is that going for flush or full house seems like the thing to do. Is there even a point to go for pair or high card not to mention stuff like straight flush.
bender
What time is it?
Play more. Every hand is viable as Tarot Cards can alter the composition of your deck, Planet Cards increase the value of the hand types, Jokers can support the hands you are paying as well as the amount of cards in your hand, number of hands per round and the amount of discards. My biggest point scoring came from playing a high card. I do think it is advisable to come up with a hand strategy early on and then make the rest of your decision to synergize and support that hand type, but I'm learning more (and unlocking more) so that could certainly change. I look at the Jokers almost like a production line in Factorio that, with each hand played or discarded ,is building up your chip, multiplier, payouts, or car card totals. The game is really deep and I haven't even messed with Blind skipping or the Tag system yet. There is a trophy for scoring 100,000,000 in a single hand. My best hand so far is just 300K.
I'm not the biggest fan of the genre and this is the first game that has gotten its' hooks into me. I thought Slay the Spire was fine, though with off putting art, but I didn't put enough time into it to speak to its' depth. I always felt like the runs dragged on forever and I was always looking at the clock. Bravato has the opposite effect on me as time just evaporates.
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TheStam
Member
Play more. Every hand is viable as Tarot Cards can alter the composition of your deck, Planet Cards increase the value of the hand types, Jokers can support the hands you are paying as well as the amount of cards in your hand, number of hands per round and the amount of discards. My biggest point scoring came from playing a high card. I do think it is advisable to come up with a hand strategy early on and then make the rest of your decision to synergize and support that hand type, but I'm learning more (and unlocking more) so that could certainly change. I look at the Jokers almost like a production line in Factorio that, with each hand played or discarded ,is building up your chip, multiplier, payouts, or car card totals. The game is really deep and I haven't even messed with Blind skipping or the Tag system yet. There is a trophy for scoring 100,000,000 in a single hand. My best hand so far is just 300K.
I'm not the biggest fan of the genre and this is the first game that has gotten its' hooks into me. I thought Slay the Spire was fine, though with off putting art, but I didn't put enough time into it to speak to its' depth. I always felt like the runs dragged on forever and I was always looking at the clock. Bravato has the opposite effect on me as time just evaporates.
Thanks for the tips! I managed to win yesterday by running a full house deck with a bit of double pair backup, boss blind blocking joker and a shit ton of cash based on interest so I could just buy all the cards and get the best jokers I could find. Felt like an awesome run but my max hand score was maybe 75k, so I guess there's a lot more to figure out.
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bender
What time is it?
I unlocked a Spectral Card tonight that added a negative trait to my Jokers but also added +1 Joker slots so at one point I had 8 Jokers. And sure enough the Ante 8 Boss Blind prevented all cards from scoring until one Joker was sold. It does feel like the random Boss Blinds are biased to have a higher probability of countering your current build but that might just be my paranoia. There are just so many synergies. I had a build the other day that ever round generated a stone card which I had doubled and then an accompanying Joker that had a chip bonus based on the number of held stone cards in your hand. And if I had known that you can rearrange your Jokers, I would have doubled the stone production in the prep screen, then doubled the bonus in the rounds. And the final boss blind in that run, shuffled my Jokers and then flipped them over. haha
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Bridges
Member
Game is like crack, it's ruining my sleep schedule. I've only won with the red and blue decks so far but I've been unlocking a ton of stuff each run. Some of the boss blind abilities are flat-out unfair though, like I don't know how you can deal with some of them most of the time like "Go Fish" which makes every drawn card face down.
Arranging Jokers is also useful because their abilities trigger from left to right, so if you have a bunch of jokers that add multi and some that multiply multi, you want to keep the ones that multiply furthest to the right so that they only trigger after all the others have been added together.
bender
What time is it?
Yep. There is just so much to pay attention to. I've made so many mistakes and kick myself every time.
begotten
Member
I had a run where I was changing Jokers every hand played lol, was intense.
The Rare Joker that copies the ability of another Joker seems busted. I played my biggest hand (over 100M) today because of it.
Evil Calvin
Afraid of Boobs
Awesome game. Very addictive.
LordNerevar76
Member
Just wanted to add I'm freaking hooked, been playing an absurd amount the last couple days. Some of your ideas on here have me inspired so I'll be jumping back in shortly...
Evil Calvin
Afraid of Boobs
That was one of boss effects. Since the cards are in order (Aces to left 2's to the right), you can guess and play those and the remaining draws will be face up.
Evil Calvin
Afraid of Boobs
Normal deck but those cards can be upgraded in dozens of ways (silver, gold, wild, glass....) which give different modifiers or added points. Visually different too. Tarots, Spectrals, dozens of card packs, foils, Planet cards.....so much cool stuff.
Evil Calvin
Afraid of Boobs
Can play with 100% touch screen as well if wanted to. I lay in bed and play it that way.
Bridges
Member
I don't typically play on handhelds but I'm really wishing I had got the Switch version or that this were on Xcloud. I would be playing this all day at work if I were able to
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
damn. steam took down the demo.
The Gamer Triple H
Gold Member
The arm boss sucks big time. Basically kills your run if you encounter it in ante 3-6. I managed to avoid it in one of the runs because I got a legendary Joker that removed boss abilities.
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bender
What time is it?
New high hand score for me;
Pretty interesting round as nothing was really falling my way and I was broke in the last 3-4 Antes. I *think* I would have made it back to Ante 11 had I not made 3 mistakes that cost me 100+ chip bonus (plus Stone card availability) and +6 multi (rather insignificant). This was again just going after high card hands.
I've got Deck clears on Red, Blue, Yellow, Green (maybe my favorite), Black (love this one too), and Magic.
Pretty interesting round as nothing was really falling my way and I was broke in the last 3-4 Antes. I *think* I would have made it back to Ante 11 had I not made 3 mistakes that cost me 100+ chip bonus (plus Stone card availability) and +6 multi (rather insignificant). This was again just going after high card hands.
I've got Deck clears on Red, Blue, Yellow, Green (maybe my favorite), Black (love this one too), and Magic.
Dacvak
No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
Dude I was searching for over an hour for this game yesterday. I forgot the name, and google not ChatGPT was able to find “new roguelike card game that uses standard 52 deck” or whatever.
I’m so glad this popped up for me today. I’m definitely grabbing this now before I forget its stupid name again.
I’m so glad this popped up for me today. I’m definitely grabbing this now before I forget its stupid name again.
bitbydeath
Member
Check out RogueBook, I made a thread on it yesterday.
Anyone else playing (Deck-builder) game RogueBook from PS++
It's like Slay the Spire but with a few differences/improvements: 1. As per the title it's a rogue game, so you can level up your characters, and other features so when you begin a new game it should always be a little bit different. 2. There's a small but traversal map where you can unlock...
bender
What time is it?
Beyond knowing poker hands and maybe the probability of being able to play each hand (lower probability hands score more by default), not really.
TheStam
Member
Thanks for the suggestion, but I have 40 hours in Roguebook. It's ok, but not even remotely close. I had a good time with it, but why oh why can you not remove cards.. Bloated decks are awful.Check out RogueBook, I made a thread on it yesterday.
Anyone else playing (Deck-builder) game RogueBook from PS++
It's like Slay the Spire but with a few differences/improvements: 1. As per the title it's a rogue game, so you can level up your characters, and other features so when you begin a new game it should always be a little bit different. 2. There's a small but traversal map where you can unlock...www.neogaf.com
bitbydeath
Member
There’s a tower that lets you pay to remove cards but as everything is random it won’t always show up.
gooner4life_uk
Member
This is my GOTY already
bender
What time is it?
Finished runs with Nebula and Ghost decks. Not my favorites as the hardest part, at least with my current strategies, is getting out of the first few rounds. If I can make it to Ante 3 or 4, I can usually stay ahead of the scoring curve until Ante 10. As someone mentioned earlier, as you unlock more Jokers, Tarot and Planet cards, it feels like a lot of runs are wasted as you can't build any multipliers and if you are squeaking by the rounds using all your hands, you aren't building gold either. Maybe that's the point but I do think the game could use a little more bias towards giving jokers early on.
nemiroff
Gold Member
Yeah, the face down thing, I don't understand why they put it in. The game has a few cheap one shots like that.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I watched some videos of this game. Maybe I'll pull the trigger at some point. Backlogged some PC games I got to get around to.... Disco, and some other games I got recently.
How complex is this game? Watching vids, there's all kinds of crazy cards and multipliers, is it easy to figure it all out? How do you know all the point multipliers will even hit the ante requirement.... got to ballpark the math in your head?
Also, whats the Seed password?
How complex is this game? Watching vids, there's all kinds of crazy cards and multipliers, is it easy to figure it all out? How do you know all the point multipliers will even hit the ante requirement.... got to ballpark the math in your head?
Also, whats the Seed password?
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bender
What time is it?
Complexity: There is a lot to learn and you aren't going to grasp everything out of the gate. The game mostly does a good job of telling you what everything does but you are going to make mistakes (I still make tons every run). Not everything is unlocked from the get go so as you make mistakes, you'll see the same upgrade options and if you misplayed/misused them, you are more likely to see them again and you'll naturally learn from your mistakes. I wouldn't say it is overly complex but there is a lot to manage and think about.
Typically each round, the points required to pass are going to increase. You'll quickly know if your build isn't keeping up with the games progression. For instance, in the screenshot above, I knew as soon as I saw the small blind number that my run was over.
The seed is what the random generation for the round was. Copying the seed let's you share it or replay it.
TropicanaTwista
Member
This game is insanely good and basically took over my day today. So odd that I wasn't expecting too much in terms of new releases from games this month, then this and HD2 drop. Think both of a solid chance of being in mt GOTY by years end.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Bought it. My most expensive Steam/GOG purchase ever at like $20 CDN.
Getting used to the game and enjoying it. Couldnt beat The Serpent at 22,000 pts. Being capped at drawing 3 cards max really hurt.
I fucked up one of my previous games which I was rolling by messing around with cards and bought one that said something like dupe a card and other cards gone. At the time, I got lucky and a ton of cards I had meshed together. Something like:
- All cards counted as face cards
- All face cards +30
- Joker Bull which I think double pts based on coins on hand (so was doing +200)
- Some other multipliers
I find a lot of these tarot celestial cards kind of shit (on the surface reading them). Maybe they are better than I think
One thing I noticed was when a card say something like 3 of a Kind +100, or 2 pair + bonus etc.... you dont need that exact hand. So a full house would qualify as 3 of a kind and also 2 pair.
Getting used to the game and enjoying it. Couldnt beat The Serpent at 22,000 pts. Being capped at drawing 3 cards max really hurt.
I fucked up one of my previous games which I was rolling by messing around with cards and bought one that said something like dupe a card and other cards gone. At the time, I got lucky and a ton of cards I had meshed together. Something like:
- All cards counted as face cards
- All face cards +30
- Joker Bull which I think double pts based on coins on hand (so was doing +200)
- Some other multipliers
I find a lot of these tarot celestial cards kind of shit (on the surface reading them). Maybe they are better than I think
One thing I noticed was when a card say something like 3 of a Kind +100, or 2 pair + bonus etc.... you dont need that exact hand. So a full house would qualify as 3 of a kind and also 2 pair.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Beat ante 8, and did endless mode. Got around 156,000 pts but lost to a 165,000 ante. Good game. Still getting used to all the cards and multipliers.
bender
What time is it?
All the Tarot cards have uses. Remember that you can drag cards to different positions in your hand or in the random draws when you pop a Tarot card (you can and should be rearranging your Jokers all the time (+multi before x multi, if you have the Joker that repeats the action of the card beside it, I had a build that required me move it three times to maximize potential). Think of your Jokers a conveyer belt that are helping you accomplish a goal. That could be as simple as boosting +Points or +/x multi, but it can also be used to level up cards/hands or to generate Planet/Tarot/Spectral/Stone cards, or generate Gold. The synergies seem limitless.
As long as the Joker says "contains", you can play something larger. For example there is a Joker that does x2 Multi for Pairs. This will kick off for Pair, Two Pair, Three of Kind, Four of Kind, Full House. The card will only trigger once though so you can't double dip with Two Pair or Four of Kind.
Some tips for everyone:
-If you are planning on buying a Tarot card, this should be your first money spending action as you can might find the card that doubles your gold (up to +20) or gives you the value of your Jokers (up to +50).
-The game encourages you to try Jokers, Tarot Cards, Planets but I'd recommend getting out of your comfort zone with Jokers. After my first successful run, I wanted to repeat what I'd done and that's a bad mindset. Playing harder difficulty levels has made me pounce on the first available Jokers that help scoring so that I could keep pass scoring thresholds. Building synergies off these Jokers that I thought were useless has produced my biggest scoring hands. Experiment! I know I'm really bad at that in games and try to stick with what works.
-Unlock the Checkered Deck. Kind of think it needs to be nerfed as it almost feels like cheating.
Got wins on the Abandoned Decks and Checkered Decks today and cleared Red Stake, Green Stake and Blue Stake difficulties. Got the $400 Gold Trophy to go with the 100M hand Trophy.
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BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Some of the art for the joker cards is so good. I love the joker doing standup and they called it “hack”. 
MudoSkills
Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
I need to get on moving the jokers around. Had a hand last night with the burned joker and the one that duplicates the far left joker skill, so was gaining two levels on the type of the first discarded hand. Should have swapped it in for something with a multiplier after that/when it came to actually scoring.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Thx. I misunderstood the celestial stuff. After I got the hang of it I maxed out at 156,000 round.
There's so many of the extra cards, I thought upgrading a hand like two pair or flush was a temporary thing just for that round as opposed to perma upgrade for the entire run.
I've been trying to max face cards and flush kind of hands as I find there's some good jokers involving face cards and that joke that makes all red or black cards act the same so it's like a flush almost every hand. Although I noticed it kind of taps out no matter how good it upgrades.
Dacvak
No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
Yeah, well I got 32k one time. So take that.I DID IT! 100 Million Trophy Get!
but seriously what the fuck
FunkMiller
Banned
The Joker card that creates a tarot after every hand if you have $3 or less basically broke the game for me
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Topped out doing 430,000 in a hand, where my avg was more like 250,000. was doing great wit the joker that adds x0.1 per planet used (got it up to about x5.0), comboed with x1.5 baseball joker per uncommon and joker pants two pair at about 60x multi. But didn't come close to beating 7,200,000 blind! Lost getting about 1,500,000.
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Bridges
Member
The checkerboard deck is basically easy mode, got up to blue stake just trying flush builds and having tons of fun. Took a peak at the challenges and all of the ones I've unlocked so far seem either way too tough for me to wrap my head around right now, or not fun enough to choose over a standard game. I'll get back those down the road.
Though I'm wondering if there is something I'm missing with that too. There's a voucher that decreased your ante and your hand size and I always skip it because I can't fathom why someone would want to do that, anyone know a use case? Or is it like the blank voucher where you buy it even though it's bad because it unlocks something else later?
The ante goes up every time you defeat a boss blind and determines the chip requirements/victory conditions for blinds.
Though I'm wondering if there is something I'm missing with that too. There's a voucher that decreased your ante and your hand size and I always skip it because I can't fathom why someone would want to do that, anyone know a use case? Or is it like the blank voucher where you buy it even though it's bad because it unlocks something else later?
TropicanaTwista
Member
Not fully sure if it's good yet, but I found it's not awful to do of you have a build that is a slow build. Like the Joker that gives you X.25 for each card you add in your deck. Or the Joker that that gives you +3 for opening a booster but not taking anything. It's an easy way to have a solid deck, go back and have easy levels and farm up your deck.
I didn't get to run it with the cards mentioned but did with the Joker that gives you a stone card every hand. Also had a joker that gave me a certain amount chips based on the amount of stone cards in my deck. It was fairly broken in terms of chip count but didn't have a good multiplier to go with it unfortunately.