Poker Roguelite Balatro has built a strong and loyal community of players, thanks to the many different ways the game surprises you during play. Today, on the same day as the game launches on mobile devices, developer LocalThunk appears to have confirmed a feature that appears to be glitchy, but is actually working as expected.
The bug, exposed by BelenosBear in a YouTube video, involves incorrect printing of Joker cards, and more specifically, it centers around seemingly random text flashing within incorrectly printed ability text.
Basically, if you’re paused during a Balatero run, go to Card Collection in the pause menu, then go to Error Print, and occasionally random numbers, letters, and symbols will flash in the ability text. It turns out that these sequences are not random, they actually tell you the top card of the deck through the numbers and letters that appear; for example, in BelenosBear’s video, sequences ending with “4S” will produce Black in the next draw. Peach 4, and “9H” produces a 9 of hearts.
BelenosBear posted their footage to X, and the official Balatro account not only acknowledged the existence of the exploit, but that it had been part of the game since its release. The account first posted a GIF of the game’s mascot, the Joker, smiling, and then posted the following:
Balatro is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC. Mobile versions launched earlier today on iOS and Android, as well as a special Balatro+ version for Apple Arcade subscribers.
