First of all, a few months back I called into question whether “Balatro” should have been considered “Game of the Year”-material in 2024. I was wrong, My Bad™.
Anyway, I’ve been playing this sneakily-addictive game for the past few months, as a regular part of my daily “Game Pass”-play rotation. If you play GP every day, you earn points towards various rewards, and I’m slowly working towards getting a $50 Xbox debit card, to likely spend on more paid mods for “Starfield”, but that’s neither here nor there. The point here is that “Balatro” is a great game for these daily play sessions. You can knock out a few games over 15-30 minutes, have a good time, and get out to move on with your day.
… unless My Lovely Bride™ is watching me play, that is.
You see, my sweetie hates playing the Xbox herself. The controller just doesn’t feel right to her (despite being very similar to the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, that she has no issues with), and she hates the interface for the Xbox, which I kind of understand. If you’re used to the simplicity of the Nintendo Switch, trying to adapt to the Xbox Series X can be a bit of a learning curve.
Regardless, she will not play the Xbox herself. She tried, even bought a DLC for “The Sims 4” that she thought she’d like, before giving up and going back to her Switch. But, she loves watching me play games on the Xbox. Especially “Balatro”.
If I’m playing “Balatro”, she stops whatever she is doing, and joins in on the fun. She has me examine all of the shop cards, so she can see what I should or should not buy. She scours over each hand, pointing out options and offering different strategies than I might be taking. She is also usually examining the Big Blind each round well before I get there, commenting in depth of how much each one is going to suck or not.
She’s a “Backseat Balatro” player, and it’s actually kinda cute. My sweetie gets way more involved in the game than I do, and honestly, I don’t get it. Yes, it is a fun game… but it isn’t “ZOMG YOU BEAT THE BLACK DECK OMG OMG OMG!”-fun.
Yeah, it took me a while to finally beat the Black deck for the first time. I suck. Helpful hint: When in doubt, do a “Pair”-based build. You can almost always get a Pair each draw, and with the right Jokers, you can beat any Deck… at least on base difficulty.
But I digress.
While I certainly don’t mind her joining in on my “Balatro” games, I do wonder why she isn’t just playing the game herself? It’s only $15 for the Nintendo Switch, after all. But she would rather just hang back and point things out during my games, than play it herself. Weird, right?
Of course, if she does start playing the game herself, she may not speak to me for a while… since she’ll be too busy trying to beat every deck at every difficulty.
UPDATE: I finally got her to buy the game for her Nintendo Switch, and she plays it every day now… and gets extremely frustrated, because she is having significant difficulties beating most decks, even on basic difficulty! So she would still rather watch me play, although sometimes she watches me on the Xbox, while she plays on her Switch.
