I thought it looked really complex when I first saw it, but you pick it up quick. Essentially, you play poker hands and score chips (the games name for points). You score enough to beat a ‘blind’ (the games name for levels) and then move on to the next one. The real fun of the game comes from the jokers you can use, which can modify how your score is calculated, pay out some money to spend between levels, or offer some other utility. There are a few secondary systems to think about when playing, but it is best to figure those out while playing.

You play poker hands to build up enough points to beat the round and earn some money. You start at the first set of three rounds (ante 1). The goal of the game is to climb up the antes as the required score to beat them climbs exponentially higher until ante 8 and you get hit with balatros version of an end game boss.

After each round won you get to visit the shop to spend that money. You use the money to buy joker cards which can buff certain kinds of poker hands to make more points. Early game you prioritize jokers that buff chips and multipliers then try to find jokers that give more money per round for late game.

Jokers can synergize together and create very interesting situations for crazy powerful poker hands. In this meme is four fingers which let’s you ply flushes and straights with four cards instead of five. if you got this early you would base your run around collecting jokers that buff straights, flushes, or ideally make straight flushes even easier to get.

You can buy planet card packs that straight up buff the ‘level’ of a poker hand boosting its points even further beyond. There’s a few secret hands too.

You can buy tarot cards that let you buff specific playing cards, remove junk cards from the deck, change the suit of some cards to make straight flushes more likely, ect.

You can buy vouchers that add really good permanent active effects like a permanent additional hand per round or make planet packs gaurenteed to level up your most played hand.

Its a rougelike so there’s a lot of really good vouchers and jokers locked behind challenges or milestones so there’s a real sense of collctathon progression as you get more experienced.