TA Playlist Wrap-Up – Balatro

TA Playlist Wrap-Up – Balatro For March’s TA Playlist, we tried something different – a game genre that had never been featured in the Playlist before. Have a seat at the table and ante up as we check out all the stats and community feedback from Balatro! The TA Playlist Team Published 25 Apr 2025 Follow topics Balatro PlayStack ID@Xbox Xbox Cloud Gaming TA Playlist Community event Roguelite The TA Playlist Team You know what they say..

. the House always wins! Welcome to the TA Playlist Wrap-Up for March 2025. For this month, we decided to do something completely different.



Playlist games tend to focus on single-player, narrative-driven experiences because games with a good plot and interesting characters tend to drive the best discussions, which is the purpose of the Playlist, after all. But every once in a while, it's nice to change things up a bit, so we decided to pick four games from genres that had never been chosen for the Playlist in the past. Our nominees included Real-time strategy game Unicorn Overlord , Visual Novel AI: The Somnium Files , and Fishing game DREDGE , but once all the bets were in, none of those games held the winning hand.

Instead, the winner was an addictively fun deck-building roguelite card game that became the surprise hit of 2024 — Balatro ! Balatro is a poker-themed deck-building roguelite game developed by an anonymous indie developer, LocalThunk , a Canadian solo dev who built the game largely as a personal project, with no real design to ever release it beyond his circle of friends. In an interview with Gamesradar , the developer said that Balatro is not the first game he's created, but previously, his games have only been shared among a small circle of personal acquaintances. "The motivation is that I enjoy game development – actually writing the code, a lot," LocalThunk says.

"Making [games] for my friends is a way to a kind of an end goal. It'd be nice to have something I could show someone, not just a proof of concept for myself that looks like a mess. These are people I've known for a long time, people I think would appreciate and have fun with these projects I've worked on.

It's not playtesting. It doesn't need to be tested. Just a thing I made.

" Balatro started out the same way, as LocalThunk had originally started working on an online competitive card game to play with his friends. As the project progressed, however, he picked up on the idea of using the poker theme as the basis for a roguelite deck builder. According to LocalThunk, he'd never played this type of game before, but became interested in the concept after watching videos of a game called "Luck Be a Landlord," which applied similar concepts using a slot machine "rent simulator" theme.

"You're not fighting anyone, necessarily," LocalThunk says. "There's conflict, but the theme of the conflict is different from other games. It's about numbers getting bigger, and I really liked that idea.

" As the project neared the end of its two-year development, LocalThunk partnered with publisher PlayStack to release the game as a free demo on Steam, just so he'd have something to put on a resume. The game caught some positive attention during the beta phase, though, and by the time it was ready for a full release, Balatro had already achieved a level of hype that LocalThunk could never have imagined. Xynvincible said: I love how much this game has taken the gaming world by storm.

I do feel as though everyone should play it. Allgorhythm said: Balatro was my choice for GOTY. It was both innovative and fun.

Allgorhythm wasn't the only one to pick this as one of the best games of 2024. Balatro was nominated for Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards, The Game Awards, The Steam Awards, and the D.I.

C.E. Awards, and it actually won GOTY at the Game Developers Choice Awards, beating out the likes of Astro Bot , Black Myth: WuKong , Final Fantasy VII Rebirth , Helldivers 2 , and Metaphor: ReFantazio .

It also won a slew of "Best Indie Game," "Best Debut Game," "Most Innovative," etc., etc. – a virtually unheard-of level of critical success for an indie game developed by one person in his spare time.

MrWebHead#1303 said: This is one of the best games I have played, very addictive and worth a try. But I understand people that don't like it. Not everyone has good taste So what is Balatro? It's a poker-themed card game, but it's not actually poker, or even gambling.

It's more akin to a roguelike deck-builder game like Slay The Spire , where you collect cards and modifiers to make attacks against enemies, except in this case the "enemies" are just set point values you have to clear, and you make your "attacks" by playing poker hands – three of a kind, flush, full house, etc. There are three blinds in each Ante, and eight Antes make up a full run, with each blind requiring a larger score to pass. The strategy of the game comes from how you get your score to increase.

You can modify the point values of your hands using Planet cards, you can modify your 52-card deck so that cards are worth more points or you have an easier time making certain hands, and most importantly, you can use special Joker cards to add and multiply your points scored with each hand. There are 150 different Jokers in the game, and each has a different effect. Some give you money to buy more cards, some score more points for playing certain cards or poker hands, and some have other special effects.

Jokers appear at random in the shop between blinds, but you only have a limited number of Joker slots, so finding a good combination of Jokers can mean the difference between success and failure. wolfsburgraz said: I just had the most fun white stake run. A few jokers fell into my lap that let me get the Big Hands achievement and the flush five I needed for the Astronomy one during the run.

- Blueprint (copies ability of joker to the right) - DNA (if first hand of round has only 1 card, add a permanent copy to deck and draw it to the hand) - Hologram (this joker gains X0.25 multi every time a playing card is added to your deck) I was using the Abandoned Deck that doesn't have any face cards, only ace to 10 of all suits. I had an ace of spades with bonus chips on it and made two copies of it on the first hand of every round by playing only it.

Between the jokers and some Death tarot cards I had 40 copies of it by the time I got to the end of ante 8. Every hand I played was a four of a kind or flush five with this card and was scoring a ton of points even though I wasn't well set up with other bonus chips or multipliers. I will never finish all the achievements in this game, but damn do I ever love it.

Balatro is the definition of a game that is "easy to learn, difficult to master" – you can pick up the basics in about fifteen or twenty minutes, but the real skill of the game is learning what all the Jokers do, how they interact with each other, and how you can make the most effective use of Planet Cards, Tarot Cards, and Spectral Cards to enhance your deck. The completion estimate for this game is currently listed at somewhere between 200-300 hours, with a couple of achievements in particular requiring a mind-boggling level of luck and/or skill to pull off. Lanceride said: If you like the Card & Board genre and/or the Roguelite genre, this is a must-try, no questions asked.

If you're not too keen on either of those genres, this game plays very heavily into what makes those genres so compelling, so it may not have much to offer you. To elaborate further..

. The addictive nature of the game comes from the structure. Like most roguelites, you don't have total freedom to choose what you focus on as you progress.

Not only are you dealing with the randomness inherent in the game of poker (and you don't need to understand poker to quickly understand this game), you also have to deal with the randomness of the jokers and other cards you purchase from shops as you progress. Your jokers fundamentally change how you play, providing ways to earn more points, make more money, produce more cards, etc. There are countless combinations of jokers and play styles, and you never know what you will get in the shop or get in card packs that you buy.

The rush of getting powerful cards or good luck in general will keep you wanting more. If you like that sort of feeling, you're in for a treat. But there is nothing more to the game than playing Poker hands with a huge number of modifiers and weirdness thrown in.

If you're looking for something with a huge amount of variety and depth within the confines of cards and poker hands, you'll get it. If you want any other kinds of variety, you most certainly will not. Most people I've seen start it get quite into it, but many just never jive with it at all.

I think it's awesome and worth trying out, though. "Addictive" is probably the adjective used most often by fans of Balatro. Hitting a good Joker combination and watching the cards and Jokers "ding" as they get activated is very satisfying, in a "make numbers go up" sort of way, and whether you win or lose a run, it definitely gives a "just one more time" sort of vibe.

CyberCPR said: This game is way too addicting for my own good. Literally was almost late every day this week because I wanted to get further into a run. Looking at the list I may end up hating the completion but the ride right now is fun and smooth.

demon jonzey said: Just started today and addicted...

I wanted it to play it before the Playlist because of word of mouth but yeah, it's right up my street. Kariyanine said: I've been playing it for about half a year now on Steam. I'm terrible at it but it's a great time nonetheless.

Completing a run is an awesome feeling. As fun and addicting as the game is, however, it's certainly not easy, especially if you're planning to go for the full completion. Earning all the achievements in the game will require unlocking 150 Jokers, 15 Decks, 22 Tarot cards, 12 Planet cards, 18 Spectral cards, 32 vouchers, and more.

And not only that, you'll have to win runs at each different difficulty level, from the basic "White Stake" all the way up to the extremely difficult "Gold Stake," where the cards are almost literally stacked against you. Lanceride said: Gold stake is just ridiculous. The rate at which rental jokers spawn is truly absurd.

It seems like every joker that might be decent ends up being a rental, and basically every rental is a death sentence that completely kills your economy. But damnit, I love it anyways and can't help but keep trying. It's still early for me (I still have one legendary joker in the collection to unlock, and I've completed zero of the challenge runs), but I think I may want to 100% this.

.. Spa1h said: When you finally manage to win with 5 different decks (will take some hours to get a good enough understanding, and good enough cards/jokers unlocked), you'll unlock challenge mode, that gives you 20 challenge runs with changed rules.

You got through that after hours of struggling? You want to complete it? Well, you need to win with all 15 decks on all eight difficulties. Listen to the others how fun especially the highest difficulty, gold stakes is. You thought you done it? The game says: Hold my beer! The best thing! You need to win on the highest difficulty while having each joker present (most of which are useless in the endgame).

Also there are many legendary joker's which you'll rarely obtain. So when I managed to finally understand the amount of dedication required to complete this RNG fest I noticed I will never be hardcore enough for that and made me dislike the game. Now the menu music is triggering anger.

I tried. I failed. I'm glad I failed For casual players, this might not matter too much.

.. they're free to just play a run here and there on White Stake difficulty and have a good time.

For some achievement completionists, though, the time and effort involved in fully finishing this game was enough to turn them away completely. HiddenJaguar25 said: I'm going to pass on this game. After I saw the 300-500 hour completion time, I tried it on an alternate gamertag, and I'm not sure I understand the hype.

That's definitely not to knock those who love it. I saw the explosion of love for it last year on other platforms so it's definitively a plus to have on Xbox and the surprise Game Pass release was fantastic. Best of luck to those completionists who started playing this game.

Khyser Bier said: This looks quite good though I'm always a bit wary of starting games that take hundreds of hours to finish. I've heard it's very addictive though so racking up the time might happen whether you like it or not Hurn Weasel said: Not something of any appeal to me, poker isn't something to interest me, roguelikes I can take or leave and hundreds of hours to 100% if you're of a mind to do such a thing is too much like hard work. Its recent joining of Game Pass at least lets lots of people have a go without coughing up any more money which is nice, but I'll not bother myself Like any other game, Balatro will appeal to some players and not to others, but it is a great benefit of Xbox Game Pass that subscribers have the ability to check it out for themselves and decide if the game is right for them.

Even if the game doesn't immediately tickle your fancy, you might find that after a few hours, it will get harder and harder to put down: RiBoP said: When this game was chosen as TA Playlist game, I really doubted whether to start it. I didn't see myself ever completing this game, but as I am not a true completionist at all, I just decided to give it a go anyway. I went in blind by not reading any tips at all at first and played for about five hours I think so far.

I have yet to complete a run and to be honest I never really liked to play poker much. However, I definitely see that the game is growing on me. Despite having difficulty getting far in the runs, just like others here, I have to say the game is really growing on me.

And I can see why the game works in getting people to try a run just once more, just like other games like Vampire Survivors and Brotato have proven to be so effective in. I do see myself trying to complete a run in Balatro over and over again for some more hours, but I really don't see myself playing this game for the amount of hours and successful runs with different decks required to complete this game.[.

..] A few nights later, I am beginning to get pretty addicted let's see how long this game draws me back in! As has been noted, the TA Playlist effect was in full force this month, with Balatro joining Xbox Game Pass as a surprise addition just days before the month started.

While this didn't have a huge influence on Balatro being chosen for the March Playlist, given that the poll was nearly over and Balatro was well in the lead before its inclusion on Game Pass was announced, it did lead to a huge influx of new players, which really padded our stats for the month. A whopping 47,490 tracked gamers unlocked at least one achievement in Balatro during March, more than the entire previous 12 months of playlist participation combined (March 2024-February 2025 had a total of 43,767 tracked gamers). 28,456 gamers started Balatro for the first time in March, while only 51 managed to complete the game's 31 achievements.

In total, the TA community unlocked 269,889 Balatro achievements in March, worth 5,586,165 GamerScore and 10,618,252 TrueAchievement Score – the largest totals for a TA Playlist game of the Month since December 2021, when we featured Forza Horizon 5 during the month it released on Game Pass. The unlocked ratio for the month was only ~1.9, however – for a game that has an overall ratio of 6.

3, that means that the achievements unlocked were overwhelmingly among the lower-ratio achievements in the game. By far the most-unlocked achievement in March was "Ante Up" , which is awarded for making it to Ante 4, halfway through a single run, unlocked by 28,328 tracked gamers in March. Unsurprisingly, the achievement that saw the fewest unlocks overall during the month was "Completionist++" , with just 54 gamers managing to earn a Gold sticker for all 150 Jokers in the game – still an impressively high number given the amount of work that is needed for that achievement.

Even with this many participants in this month's Playlist, I honestly didn't expect to see anyone on the March 2025 Shout-Out List , but it turned out there were 10 gamers who managed to both start and finish Balatro in the month of March. This includes a truly impressive showing from GhostriderBR666 , who managed to unlock all 31 of the game's achievements in just slightly over 48 hours from March 9 to March 11, followed closely by 不是数字的名字 , who earned all achievements in just over 50 hours from March 25 to March 27. Those completion times seem impossible, given the difficulty we've discussed so far, but if you've mastered the game on another platform, I would guess that maybe that would speed up your completion time if you're starting over from scratch, so maybe it's not so far-fetched.

Even getting it done within a single calendar month is super impressive, though, so congrats to all 10 of this month's Shout Outs! And with that, it's time to throw in the cards for the March 2025 wrap-up. Make sure you check out the April TA Playlist game, Mass Effect , and leave your thoughts about Commander Shepherd's first adventure in this month's Spoiler-Free and Spoiler Discussion Threads. See you there! Thanks to BetaSigX20 for writing this Wrap-Up! More Balatro stories: The best Xbox Game Pass games to play in April 2025 The most popular Xbox Game Pass games of 2025 so far TA Playlist game for March 2025 announced All reveals and announcements from the ID@Xbox Showcase February 2025 Balatro joins Xbox Game Pass today as surprise addition head.

ready(function() { getTimeAgo(); }) TA Playlist Written by The TA Playlist Team The TA Playlist is a monthly community event. Everyone votes on which of four games to play, and then we all play through it in the following month. There's a dedicated hub to discuss everything about the game, from story beats to gameplay tips – and of course, you can track your achievement progress during the month as well.

TA Playlist was created by Mark Delaney and is now run by Miles , Nici and Chewie ..