I Finally Played: Balatro
Posted on August 19, 2026 by Aywren
Back when Balatro was still new, I heard a whole lot about this deck-building Poker roguelike. I mean, a lot a lot about it. It was, and still is, rated overwhelmingly positive on Steam.
And yet, it took three tries and some YouTube videos to figure out why the game just didn’t click for me. Laugh if you will, but as someone with little Poker knowledge, it didn’t appeal at first.
I originally tried Balatro on one of my last months of PC Game Pass. In fact, it might have been one of the final games I played on the service before my free trial was over and I refused to pay the higher cost for the subscription.
I’m not sure how much time I spent with the game. It wasn’t a whole lot. I went through the tutorial and did middling okay, but every time I started a follow-up game, I simply could not make it past the third round.
Knowledgeable Balatro players probably know what I was doing wrong. I wasn’t using the money I earned at the store to buy cards or upgrades. I was trying to horde it because I didn’t understand that in the initial early phase of the game, it really is use it or lose.
And so, I found myself failing over and over again because I didn’t understand the base mechanics that not only made the game possible, but also made it fun. I remember putting it down and coming back to it the next day with the same result. I wrote it off back then, and hadn’t thought about it much since.
That was, until earlier this year, when I ran across it at a Steam sale. Again, I saw the blazingly brilliant “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating for it and wondered… why did it not appeal to me?
I also saw a low price point and the fact that it’s Steam Deck verified, and that nudged me to do some research about it. Specifically, I took to YouTube where I watched this video:
And while watching and taking into consideration the information of this video, I realized where I’d gone wrong in my first two tries of the game. The money you earn was meant to be spent on upgrades, not to be saved for something that looked good in the store (especially since I had no clue what was actually useful).
So, I went out on a limb, purchased it during the Steam sale, and told myself – if I didn’t like it, I could return it in under 2 hours of play. I don’t like to return games on Steam, and do so only rarely, but I will if I must.
Turns out, however, that wasn’t needed in this case. Armed with new information on the proper way to play Balatro, I bought the game and happily sunk over 4 hours into it. I know 4 hours doesn’t seem like a lot, but for me, it is. Especially when the game loop is fairly short and punctual like this game is.
I even installed it on my laptop for my trip upstate earlier this year, where I introduced it to Syn. She enjoyed it well enough, I think, and I can see myself playing more of it in the future, too. When time permits.
I do enjoy it on the Deck as much as on PC – though I have a bad habit of pushing the wrong buttons on the Deck, causing me to play cards I was trying to discard instead. That rarely goes over well.
So, I’ll chalk this up to user error. I’m happy that I gave the game a third try, armed with more information. While this wasn’t complex in the least, sometimes overlooking important elements of a game can make all the difference.