Berlin (dpa/tmn) –. To be successful in card games, you should know the rules well. But in this game it’s not that easy, because special cards are used to combine as much as possible.
Card games often follow this pattern: you draw randomly shuffled cards, find the best combinations and play them as best as possible. In the card video game “Balatro” you need more than just luck, because certain special cards make the difference.
In order to understand the principle of the game, some mathematics is necessary. Each round consists of three so-called blinds (minimum bets), in which players find and play the cards in the classic poker combinations such as full house or flush.
The resulting number of points is added to with a multiplier, which has to be increased over the course of the game using special cards. To win a blind, you have to beat a certain high score, which increases with each round.
With joker and tarot cards it’s fun
For blinds you win you get money that you can exchange for booster packs in a shop. What you draw here puts the rules of real poker games to shame. Joker cards add more cards to your hand, generate even more chips or increase the multiplier in a variety of ways. There are also tarot cards that can briefly change the values of the entire hand and turn a round on its head.
Even for the values of the normal cards, upgrades can be purchased to increase them. There are no limits to the combinations, which doesn’t make finding the right tactics any easier. But since the cards are well explained and the learning curve is steep, you shouldn’t be afraid of the many options.
Strange, tricky, successful!
The strange idea of adding an upgrade system to a card game actually comes to fruition in “Balatro”. Through the various upgrades and special cards, the developers have created a tricky card game the likes of which have never been seen before.
“Balatro” is available for PC, Nintendo Switch as well as Playstation and Xbox consoles and costs around 14 euros.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240307-99-246896/2 (dpa)