Balatro
The top quote on
Balatro’s
Steam page declares this game is “the reason Valve should rename their handheld 'the
Balatro machine’”, so when I got my Deck, naturally it was high on my interest list. Plus the fact I’d heard how good and/or addictive it was from other sources, such as
PC Gamer’s top 100 lists, where it's placed 8th for the last two years (and it didn't exist before that). I didn’t think it would be the second game I (properly) played on my Deck, mainly because I hadn’t bought it yet and had plenty of other games to be going on with, but then I saw a good deal on it a couple of days ago and, well, here I am.
And after two playthroughs… I’m not sure I totally get it. By which I mean, there’s a
lot going on and I didn’t quite get how it all worked. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m just getting started or because my brain just isn’t wired for it all. Nonetheless, I played for 81 minutes solid and mostly enjoyed it (even if I often felt like I was guessing what to do rather than having a genuine strategy) — and, like I said, that was only two runs, so I feel like something must have gone right if I wasn’t crashing out in five minutes. We’ll see if I find it addictive enough to keep consuming my time.
