Welcome to the official Balatro mobile game!
Hypnotic and endlessly satisfying, Balatro is a magical mix of card games like Solitaire and Poker, that lets you twist the rules in ways never seen before!
Your goal is to beat the Boss Blinds by making strong poker hands.
Find new Jokers that change…
Finally, the ultimate weapon against boredom while waiting
They’re a small studio with a small budget. They probably didn’t have the skills and money. The success of the game on Steam would have given them the resources to do this.
I also think most people don’t see the market, it’s only got this amount of attention on phones because of the success on steam.
A odd side note, someone was pretty clever and found a way to port the steam version to ios and Android well before the official port - https://retrohandhelds.gg/how-to-install-balatro-on-android-and-ios/. I’ll admit to having used this to play on my phone over the summer, but definitely bought it again once it hit the app store.
Huh, google play is refusing to sell it to me. Getting a [OR- FGEMF-20] error code regardless of payment method.
Edit: searching I came across a reddit thread, the post is older but all the comments are people complaining about this issue with trying to buy Balatro today.
Edit2: working now for me, about 4 hours after the game went live
I haven’t tested that out myself and I have no idea how it compares to their official mobile release, but I’m super curious about how it was implemented (it’s the first time I saw a tool that could convert a game to an iOS app), so I’ll be looking into it at some point.
Balatro Mobile Maker works because the game’s engine (LOVE 2D) is designed from the ground up to be multiplatform. It’s trivial to “port” compared to other engines.
That makes sense, and that engine and some of the other games they feature look interesting.
Does that mean that Balatro (and presumably other LOVE 2D games) is packaged like Doom with its WAD files, where there’s an engine (a generic LOVE 2D one) that runs the game, interpreting the Lua game code, which is basically just packaged like an asset? Or is there a Balatro engine that needed to be built for each platform? I saw that BMM downloads a base IPA and an APK patcher, so I’m assuming it’s closer to the latter, but I could see it going either way.
My biggest fear was arriving at the app store and seeing the word free. Glad to see there’s still people making games where you just pay and get the game.
Yeah, and this game is 100% worth the ten bucks they’re asking for. I already own it on Steam (where it cost $20 when I got back at the beginning of the year), and will happily pay another $10 to have it on my phone too.
Google Play was having payment processor issues (see https://status.play.google.com/summary for more details) but they appear to be resolved now, so you could try again.
I’m chuffed it’s a one-time purchase. Before release I only had the option to pre-download and I was a bit fearful of inevitably sinking cash on microtransactions (despite the dev being vocally against predatory practices)
Update: Transaction declined! They really are considerate of taking my money!
Google Play was having payment processor issues (see https://status.play.google.com/summary for more details) but they appear to be resolved now, so you could try buying it again.
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This crack is very moreish
Nice reference :)
This is bad news for my productivity
It was kind of a bad move to not release it day one on mobile. If anything this game was made for mobile, it’s the perfect 5 minute waster.
They’re a small studio with a small budget. They probably didn’t have the skills and money. The success of the game on Steam would have given them the resources to do this.
I also think most people don’t see the market, it’s only got this amount of attention on phones because of the success on steam.
A odd side note, someone was pretty clever and found a way to port the steam version to ios and Android well before the official port - https://retrohandhelds.gg/how-to-install-balatro-on-android-and-ios/. I’ll admit to having used this to play on my phone over the summer, but definitely bought it again once it hit the app store.
yeah. 5 mins. Thats all you play. Definitely not 3 or 4 hours just disappear the moment you load it up.
Welp…goodbye Internet, I’ll see you in a few months.
Huh, google play is refusing to sell it to me. Getting a [OR- FGEMF-20] error code regardless of payment method.
Edit: searching I came across a reddit thread, the post is older but all the comments are people complaining about this issue with trying to buy Balatro today.
Edit2: working now for me, about 4 hours after the game went live
Yea same issue on my end. Seems the balatro dev didn’t set up the shop properly.
maybe we can find an APK somewhere, I already own the game on steam and while steamlink works well, native app would be nice
Edit: there’s a copy on mobilism
There is a project to convert the Steam app to a side-loadable mobile app (both for Android and iOS): https://github.com/blake502/balatro-mobile-maker
I haven’t tested that out myself and I have no idea how it compares to their official mobile release, but I’m super curious about how it was implemented (it’s the first time I saw a tool that could convert a game to an iOS app), so I’ll be looking into it at some point.
Balatro Mobile Maker works because the game’s engine (LOVE 2D) is designed from the ground up to be multiplatform. It’s trivial to “port” compared to other engines.
That makes sense, and that engine and some of the other games they feature look interesting.
Does that mean that Balatro (and presumably other LOVE 2D games) is packaged like Doom with its WAD files, where there’s an engine (a generic LOVE 2D one) that runs the game, interpreting the Lua game code, which is basically just packaged like an asset? Or is there a Balatro engine that needed to be built for each platform? I saw that BMM downloads a base IPA and an APK patcher, so I’m assuming it’s closer to the latter, but I could see it going either way.
Same here
I read that Google Play was having payment processor issues, so for anyone experiencing this in the near future - that’s probably why.
Part of what was weird is I tried paying with Google Play credit, and it wouldn’t take that either.
Oh no, this is not gonna be good for my productivity
Charlie Booker the guy who writes Black Mirror etc uses it as a reward mechanism. Write for an hour? Balatro.
My biggest fear was arriving at the app store and seeing the word free. Glad to see there’s still people making games where you just pay and get the game.
Yeah, and this game is 100% worth the ten bucks they’re asking for. I already own it on Steam (where it cost $20 when I got back at the beginning of the year), and will happily pay another $10 to have it on my phone too.
finally, i don’t have to stream from my PC to play the funny card game
Transaction declined…
Google Play was having payment processor issues (see https://status.play.google.com/summary for more details) but they appear to be resolved now, so you could try again.
I’m chuffed it’s a one-time purchase. Before release I only had the option to pre-download and I was a bit fearful of inevitably sinking cash on microtransactions (despite the dev being vocally against predatory practices)
Update: Transaction declined! They really are considerate of taking my money!
Google Play was having payment processor issues (see https://status.play.google.com/summary for more details) but they appear to be resolved now, so you could try buying it again.
Releasing the app on the same day to the Apple App Store and Apple Arcade is a nice win for Apple Arcade.
I’m just happy it wasn’t an Apple Arcade exclusive.
Well that’s the end of me ever doing anything productive for the rest of my life.