How the Non-Gambling Poker Game Balatro Could Venture into Competitive Gaming

Just one month after its launch, incredibly creative indie gem Balatro announced on its Steam Store Blog that the game had already sold over one million units. With that same announcement, developer LocalThunk said that they’ve got plenty of plans for the future of the poker-based, deckbuilding, rogue-like game.

While the game is very enjoyable and consistently challenging in its current single-player form, being an eSports site, it’s tough to avoid thinking of its potential in competitive gaming. After all, poker itself is already a very competitive game, but there is also the angle of randomization within Balatro’s core mechanics.

So, would there be appeal in a Balatro competitive scene, and what kind of game modes would work?

A non-gambling poker challenge

Poker has been around for centuries in many different forms. At the turn of the millennium, we experienced the poker boom, propelled by the rise of online poker and major competitions being televised as sports. Put on by the Travel Channel, broadcasts of the World Series of Poker were a huge hit, proving to be tense and intriguing.

The game has continued to evolve since the 2000s. Now, it’s not just about taking on other players. At most of the top-rated sites under review by BonusFinder New Zealand, there’s a different adaptation of the formula. Instead, in casino poker, you play against the dealer’s hand with the one you’re dealt to get better prizes for better hands.

It’s always about the competition and beating whatever foe you’re up against. In Balatro, the formula’s one of creating your best poker hands with the deck you’re building. You power up individual cards, make hand combinations more rewarding with special boosts, and manipulate the returns and cards with Joker and Tarot cards.

There’s a lot going on, which helps to make each run so engaging and different. Importantly, and as detailed by Daily Bruin US, Balatro is uniquely not a gambling game or poker-style gambling game. The similarities are in the hands played. You don’t bet chips but do win chips for beating each opponent (known as blinds in the game). As such, a competitive Balatro scene wouldn’t have anything to do with gambling, unlike, say, Ultimate Team.

Making Balatro competitive

Balatro is currently a superb single-player game. Given that it’s based on poker, though, there’s a clear path to making competitive games out of it. The clearest path would be race-like competitions with speed runs. Everyone runs the same game – which would remove some of the randomization of the store between games – and see who goes on the longest run.

Of course, people who want a competitive Balatro game are likely angling towards player-versus-player games. This would require a new mode, in theory, where you keep the Joker cards you acquire and build two decks – one of your deck and one of Jokers.

To keep randomization in the game, it could follow a draft system like in many trading card games. Two players draft their deck, play the game over a set ante count with the store to visit in between rounds, and then the one with the highest score wins. Regardless of the direction, there’s a way to make Balatro a thrilling competitive game.

Being an indie game, developing some form of competitive version would take a lot of time. Even with the money coming in from the sales spurred on by stellar reviews and word of mouth, for now, Balatro eSports are likely a long way off if such game modes are coming at all.