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I’m the type of person who wants to cry when the rules of a board game are explained to me, so I generally don’t like card games. In real life poker, you get bored after a few rounds, go all-in, and crash spectacularly, but something can happen. However, real-life poker is not a varsity game. Balatro may be the best card game you’ve ever come across. Especially this morning I left the steam deck at home. It’s to avoid sitting at your desk and playing Ballatro instead of doing other not-so-fun things you should be doing at work, like staring regretfully at your constantly overflowing email inbox. I think it will be one of the breakout games of this year. Join us and you’ll be hooked too.

Here’s how to play: You are dealt a regular hand of 9 cards, from which you play your best 4- or 5-card poker hand (flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, etc.). Then, a satisfying “Ding!” sound determines the hand’s score and moves on to the next score. The only person you play is yourself. Once you reach your point goal (perhaps a few hundred points to begin with), you advance to the next round.

In between games, you’ll find mystical features such as holographic, steel, and gold versions of cards that give multipliers or extra chips, planet cards that increase points to increase the value of certain hands, and tarot cards that transform cards. You can add things to your deck. A bunch of interesting ways and strange jokers that can completely change your strategy. It’s poker, but a little trippy.and you Assumption Bending the rules.

By the fourth or fifth series of the game, hearts gained additional multipliers, playing face cards earned double points, and planets gave modest pairs huge multipliers. You’ll end up with a deck of quirky lucky cards. You can rely on it to help you reach your point goals. You are abandoning the ace in hopes of drawing his three diamonds for a special steal that will add valuable points to your score. Every three rounds, a boss appears that makes horrible modifications to your play, such as limiting your cards to his five, drawing cards face down, or randomly disabling entire suits. You have to adapt round by round, hope your luck holds out and keep things in your favor.

Apparently, he can beat Balatolo by completing an eight-round match. I googled this question and came across a thread on the Steam forums where someone was brazenly claiming to have won 2 rounds and was still winning 80% of the time. I hate this person.

It went to the final stage twice and was successfully bottled. Once, I forgot that I hadn’t actually leveled up my hand and went for a rare straight-to-his flush, but I ended up getting fewer points than I could have with a few pairs. Several times I’ve grossly miscalculated my hand and discarded a card in hopes of drawing a replacement card that was mathematically very unlikely to appear. One time, I encountered a boss right before the final stretch. Only allow one type of hand to be played.

Baratolo may feel terribly cursed when something like this happens, but the thing is, this isn’t entirely a game of chance. Although you have to have good luck from the cards and the belief that a decent joker will appear in the shop between rounds, do Decide where to spend your money on new cards, which hands to go for, and which risk opportunities to take. So, like all good roguelikes, each failure resets your progress so you can feel like you’ll be fully successful next time.

And then 2 hours disappear. I find the slightly mesmerizing chillwave music and pixel psychedelic illustrations, the naughty Joker card illustrations and retro TV scanlines disturbingly calming. If Baratolo was trying to extort money from you, that would be pure evil. But the good news is that once you’ve paid £12.79, all your gambling is done virtually and all you’re spending is your time.

I imagine that perhaps after I achieve that elusive victory, the spell will finally be broken. In the meantime, now life is baratolo and baratolo is life. I’m dreaming with clubs and spades.