Balatro
Balatro is a deck-building roguelite in which players construct poker hands to earn chips and overcome enemy blinds. The game features mechanics for enhancing a deck of playing cards, purchasing Jokers that…
Balatro is a card & board game developed by LocalThunk, released 20 February 2024 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. The main story takes about 45.9 hrs to finish.
What Balatro is
Balatro is a card & board game game developed by LocalThunk and released in 2024. It was published by Playstack. It is available on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, iOS, Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows). It runs on LÖVE.
The premise, in the publisher's words
Balatro is a 2024 poker-themed roguelike deck-building game developed by solo developer LocalThunk, and published by Playstack. It was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on February 20, 2024, with a port to macOS on March 1. Ports for Android and iOS were released on September 26, 2024. A dedicated Nintendo Switch 2 version was released on February 25, 2026. In the game, the player must score points by playing poker hands from a starting 52-card deck, with a limited number of hands and discards each round.
How it plays
It is played from a bird view / isometric perspective. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. There are 31 achievements to unlock.
How it was received
Balatro holds a critic score of 91 out of 100. That places it above 97% of the 303 rated card & board game games in our database, which average 70. Games released in 2024 averaged 76, so it scored 15 points above the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 89, across 407 votes.
How long it takes, and what that costs
The main story runs about 45.9 hrs. Completing everything takes closer to 174.7 hrs, roughly 3.8 times the length of the critical path.
What you need to run it
The minimum specification calls for Intel Core i3, 1 GB RAM and OpenGL 2.1 compatible graphics card, integrated graphics. At 1GB of RAM, it will run on essentially any working PC — that is below what a budget laptop ships with today.
What it costs, and where
Storefront pricing varies enormously by country: Pakistan is the cheapest region we track at $6.99 (about $6.99), while United Kingdom pays £12.79 — 2.4 times more. In Pakistan it is priced at Rs 7 on Steam, which is about $6.99.
What it launched against
Balatro launched on 20 February 2024, within three weeks of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Helldivers 2, Persona 3 Reload and Pacific Drive. It reviewed better than all of them. It arrived 4 years into the PlayStation 5's life, so it was built for hardware developers already knew well.
Released around the same time: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Helldivers 2, Persona 3 Reload, Pacific Drive.
Cheats and codes
We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Balatro yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.
Official trailer
Sourced from the publisher’s YouTube channel. See all 4 videos →
Screenshots
All media
Dlc
Quick answers
Balatro — frequently asked questions
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