This is an appreciation blog post about one of my favorite joker cards in the video game Balatro. Before I explain the card, I want to explain the basic context of the game it is in.
Balatro is essentially a single-player poker game, but with roguelike elements. You play a series of Poker Hands. Playing better Poker Hands gives you more cumulative points. You use these points to complete each (increasingly difficult) challenge. Also, there are a limited number of poker hands you can play in each challenge, so if you run out of hands, you lose.
After beating one of these challenges, you gain a flat amount of money, and some extra money, for each unused poker hand.
You use the money in the shopping phase to buy “Joker Cards” and “Tarot Cards” to upgrade your deck of cards. Jokers reward you for playing in an unusual way. For example, the Greedy Joker provides bonus points for each Diamond Suit card played. Unlike Joker cards, Tarots are 1-use consumables. Tarot cards are more about modifying your deck to synergize with your Jokers. For example, you can use “The Star” Tarot to change the Suit of 3 cards to Diamond. Also, you have limited inventory space, so you can’t horde Tarot cards.
Now I’m going to talk about the design of one of my favorite Joker cards, the “Vagabond”. It’s ability is: Whenever you play a Poker Hand while having 3 or less money, gain a random Tarot Card.
This already is interesting for asking you to look at money differently. The script is flipped! Suddenly, it can be annoying that you can’t refuse to accept your baseline reward money from completing each challenge. You are now incentivized to try and spend all of your money whenever you go to the shop, and it may even be worth it to purchase something you don’t need, just to keep your money low.
This happening once per Hand played also presents you with an interesting choice. After completing a challenge, you gain money for each unused poker hand, so you really want to play every poker hand you can. Doing so minimizes money earned and maximizes Tarot cards gained. If feasible, you may want to play sub-optimal poker hands in the beginning, to win the challenge at the last minute with your final poker hand. This creates a delicious risk-reward system.
And your reward being random tarot cards also asks you to make fascinatingly nuanced choices. Many Tarot cards aren’t useful in every situation. If your current strategy relies on playing flushes with Spade cards, a Tarot that converts cards into the diamond suit can be useless, or even detrimental. You have limited inventory space to hold Tarot cards, so the question becomes this: “What is the least troublesome way to get rid of this card?”. If you don’t want to play a Tarot card because it’s effect is detrimental, the only other way to get it out of your inventory is selling it for money. Depending on how you want to modify your deck, these Tarot cards can be amazing rewards, or they can lock you in situations where you need to minimize negative effects.