Quick Review: Balatro

Balatro

2024, LocalThunk

Reviewed on Jan 14, 2025

Didn't like it

Decent

I like it

Loved it!

The idea of this being a “Poker Roguelike”, two things I don’t really like, kept me off the game for a while. Luckily, it being included on Apple Arcade gave me the nudge to try it out. And I’m glad I did!

It’s so easy to start, and hard to stop. Addictive, satisfying, and overall so fun to play.

Game

About Quick Reviews

Since June 2024, I started writing quick reviews of movies, TV shows and games I've watched or played.

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Matt shared a Cool Link

Incredible visual demonstration of how the absurd size of modern SUVs turns them into even deadlier machines. Not only the hood height makes them deadlier in a possible collision, but the vastly increased blind spots make collisions more likely to happen.

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This is so cool! TownSquare adds a small virtual square at the footer of a website, on which visitors can walk around, jump, high-five and talk to each other. And this can connect multiple websites together!

Strongly considering adding this somewhere on my website.

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Baldur's Gate 3

2023, Larian Studios

Reviewed on Jun 19, 2026

Didn't like it

Decent

I like it

Loved it!

Hard to review this one. On one hand, it’s one of the best (if not the best) stories and set of characters I’ve ever seen in a video game. Not only that, it’s something only a game can offer: it was my story, I always felt like my choices mattered and saw them affecting the world and characters in some way.

On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy much of the rest. My playthrough lasted 99h, and by hour 30 I was already tired of combat and exploration and couldn’t wait for it to end. I ended up lowering the difficulty so I could just get combat over ASAP and get back to the story bits which was the only thing I cared about.

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Yesss! I’ve waited for this for so long! One of the worst parts of my job is trying to implement those kind of separators (really common in designs) without this functionality being an actual thing yet. So many hacks, complex calculations, for something so visually trivial.

And even if it takes a while to get to other browsers, it’s mostly a visual drawback if not supported; so I can already start thinking about using it.