- Target Audience: Roguelike fans, card game lovers, strategy-heads who enjoy depth disguised as luck.
- Game Name: Balatro
- Creator: LocalThunk
- Platform: PC, Switch, PS5, Xbox
Here’s the thing: Balatro looks (and can sometimes feel) like it’s a poker game. But it’s really not. It’s not a gambling game by any means—it’s not a game designed for addiction. Or is it? That’s what I want to be thinking about here. Yes, Frankenstein may not have been the monster, but maybe Frankenstein was the monster all along (Does that make any sense at all? No? Well, ok). Balatro taps into the language of gambling to create a compulsive experience, meaning that even though it’s not a gambling game, sometimes it can feel like one.
In 2024, just 10 months after the game was released, the Pan-European Game Information board (basically the ESRB for non-American markets) gave the game an 18+ rating for “gambling… and poker instruction.” This immediately outraged press and games journalists all over—how could this fun and friendly game have more restrictions than the thousands of other games that have literal gambling hidden behind microtransactions and loot boxes?
The public consensus was this: Balatro doesn’t pose the same risk to the game-playing audience as gambling games do. It’s not exploiting player’s wallets, there’s no wagering of cash (in-game or otherwise), what seems like “gambling” is just a skin over a strategy-based roguelike. It could have easily been a dog-collecting game, and when you get the right combination of dogs, you get points (stupid example, but you get it). But here’s the thing. It’s not a dog-collecting game. Balatro is a game that looks like poker. It certainly feels like poker sometimes too, and that’s the kicker. It’s addictive, in a different way.
It gets its addictive hooks in deep to players by layering two mechanical systems: the randomness of drawing cards to make poker hands, and the meticulous optimization of cohesive deck-building. The core game loop involves building two decks over a series of hands: Your “normal” deck of cards, which you can upgrade and multiply and delete cards, and your hand of jokers, which are powerful beings that give you lots of different abilities. What makes the game feel addictive is the presentation of the choices given. Your chip counts go up, the jokers multiply everything, and the sound effects and animations mimic casino jackpot visuals—which feels like a deliberate choice.
Of course, unlike real gambling, the randomness in Balatro has boundaries. You are able to predict the odds of hands, create strategic builds, and you’re able to improve with experience. However, we still have the repetitive dopamine drip brought on by the “just one more game” mentality. I have friends who are unable to do schoolwork without rewarding themselves with one round of counting chips first. The compulsive loop still exists, and it mirrors behaviors seen in gambling disorders. The structure of repeated failure and rare-yet-euphoric success really trains players to accept loss as part of progress—these are the same things that gambling learns players. It’s similar to the idea of “just one more hand,” in blackjack. 
This puts Balatro in an ethical gray zone. It’s not selling microtransactions, you can’t pay-to-win, there’s no money that goes into it after the initial purchase. What you’re losing is time, it taketh away all free time. I certainly have postponed sleep plenty of times to get another round in. It simulates the adrenaline of gambling; players aren’t fully informed of these traps embedded deep in the systems. This could be dangerous, especially for younger or neurodivergent players who are susceptible to these types of compulsive loops.
According to the Designing Chance reading, gambling addiction thrives on variable ratio reinforcement: you don’t know when the payout is coming, but you know it’ll come eventually. Balatro mirrors this by making every hand feel like it could be the one that turns your run around. That potential is what makes players cling to even bad runs.
Balatro is a brilliant, infuriating, compulsive game. It never asks for your credit card, but it does demand your attention, your time, and your willingness to be emotionally yanked around by luck and strategy. In a landscape filled with cynical gacha mechanics, Balatro is an oddly honest offender. It proves that you don’t need real-world stakes to trigger real-world addiction.
Maybe the question isn’t whether a game simulates gambling. Maybe it’s whether it feels like gambling. And if it does—even without money on the table—what do designers owe their players?
