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Balatro is releasing on February 20th and if you love card games and deck-builders, you're probably going to need to check this one out. It also has a demo available for Steam Next Fest 2024.

A Poker-inspired roguelike, because while the basics are Poker, you do get plenty of tricks up your sleeve to win big with various special cards. It's weirdly hooked its teeth right into me and the demo thankfully plays just fine on Linux with Proton 8. Absolutely no issues found in my time trying out the demo.

Like any good deck-builder it has special cards, and a card shop to keep changing your deck. What really makes it interesting are the Joker cards, there's 150 of them, each with their own special ability to change how your run goes and you can have multiple of them equipped at once. Like Odd Todd above, which gives me +30 chips for odd ranked cards when played.

There's a lot more to it like special Tarot cards, which can enhanced and change your current cards if you're trying to get a particular hand. These cards, along with the Jokers, can really end up massively changing how your run goes and can suddenly dump a whole lot of chips your way.

Now, this is not Traditional Poker by any sense. It has the basics of it, and you play your hands like it's a Poker game as you aim for a Full House, a Flush and so on but rather than playing other players or bots, you're trying to beat the Blind with the score required getting ever-higher so you need to work on those synergies from your hand with your other special cards to score big.

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Balatro is delicious and it's going to steal a lot of time away from you as you come back for seconds and thirds.

Give Balatro a try on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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5 comments

  • Supporter Plus
Terrible at poker, huh?

Tell you what, next poker night you can come along and we'll teach you!

Playing poker is an essential skill to learn!
Terrible at poker, huh?

It's a bluff, obviously.
datablob Feb 10
The UI/UX is so juicy, makes me want to learn poker just to play this
  • Supporter Plus
Terrible at poker, huh?

It's a bluff, obviously.
You could be right.

But, I'm willing to hedge my bets and take a gamble on this one, the reward could be beneficial!

PS: Liam, don't forget your wallet.
Anza Feb 11
Roguelite gambling is not yet a category in Steam, but now there's at least two of them, this and Luck Be A Landlord.

I thought that I found perfect synergy for second round by creating tarot engine. But I guess plain multiplication generation is not enough. Need to get also chips. One and half hours went quite fast.
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