Balatro is the poker roguelike that everyone's been going crazy about for the past year, myself included. This TAS aims to complete a run of the game as quickly as possible from the tutorial.
Game Mechanics
In case you're one of the 5 people who haven't played the game yet, here's how it works.
A run of Balatro consists of 8 Antes, each separated into 3 rounds called Blinds. The Small and Big Blind can be skipped, which gives a random effect like giving you a free joker or re-rolling the Boss Blind, for the cost of not getting to see the shop after playing said Blind. Boss Blinds must be played to advance to the next Ante.
Each Blind will have a certain score that must be met in order to advance. Score is calculated by multiplying 2 values - chips and mult. The better the hand you put together the more base chips and mult you get for scoring. Additionally cards played give additional chips so a higher hand is worth more.
Shops contain Jokers, which are passive upgrades, most of them add to or otherwise modify how much mult or chips you have before scoring. You can also find tarot, planet and spectral cards which all have various effects, mainly affecting your deck or your jokers.
Goal Choice
I decided to TAS the tutorial, rather than a more traditional run, mainly due to wanting to compare to another
existing TAS of this branch, as well as not having to worry about finding the perfect seed. Interestingly, playing the actual tutorial instead of the seed "TUTORIAL" has a few minor differences which ended up affecting routing.
Optimization
Thanks to cards being able to be picked as they're drawn as well as the lengthy animations between actions Balatro ends up being quite trivial to optimize. Any interaction required one frame of hovering the cursor over the option, then a mouse click and one frame of hovering over where I just clicked.
However, there appears to be some sort of inconsistency with menu buttons being available earlier or later depending on other factors. While making improvements to the TAS I've noticed a handful of times where suddenly the Cash Out button at the end of a round would become active 1 frame later than previously.
The Run
Ante 1
Before the run even begins I go into the settings and max out game speed.
Because I'm playing the tutorial blind skips are disabled initially, so I am forced to play the small blind. I discard twice for a Straight that will score enough to beat the blind in one hand.
In the shop I open a Buffoon Pack and pick up Gros Michel, a joker which gives +15 mult and has a 1 in 6 chance of going extinct at the end of a round. I also get an Empress tarot card for later.
After clearing the first blind skip buttons are now unlocked, so I skip the big blind and go straight into the boss. I use the empress to enhance a Jack and a 3, both will come in handy later, and play a pair of jacks, as with the Gros Michel and the enhancement from Empress it's just enough to score enough in one hand.
Note: The encode provided plays a two pair here, this is an optimization I found later and decided not to re-encode.
Ante 2
From here on out all skippable blinds will be skipped.
Shop had nothing interesting so I move on to the blinds immediately, on the skips I pick up an Orbital Tag, which upgrades my Flush to level 4, as well as an Arcana Pack, which I use to upgrade another Jack and 3 and double my money for later.
On the boss blind I play a Full House. This is where the upgraded 3s come in, as without them I could not score enough to beat the blind in one hand.
Ante 3
I re-roll the shop and pick up a negative Blue Joker. Negative is a joker edition that makes it not take up a joker slot, meaning I can have one extra over the max. This is relevant for later. The joker itself simply adds some chips to help score enough for future blinds.
The first skip gives me a spectral pack, from which I use a Sigil card which converts the suit of 5 cards into hearts, making it faster to put together flushes later. The second skip is a standard pack which I don't use.
The boss is once again barely beaten in one hand thanks to a full house with upgraded cards. After this blind my Gros Michel hits the 1 in 6 and goes extinct, adding a much more powerful Cavendish into the available joker pool.
Ante 4
I re-roll the shop to get a Hermit, doubling my money once again, the roll the shop two more times to pick up Joker Stencil and Ramen, both jokers that multiply my mult, making them very powerful. I also pick up the Paintbrush voucher, which increases my hand size by one. This saves discards later.
The boss is beaten with a flush, which will become my main hand from now on thanks to the upgrades earlier.
Ante 5
I open a buffoon pack in the shop and pick up Cavendish, giving me an additional 3x mult.
The boss blind here amusingly draws the first hand face down, but of course with the power of savestates I can know where cards are and play a flush after one discard.
Ante 6
I pick up Baseball Card here, giving me an additional 1.5x mult for every uncommon joker I have (Stencil and Ramen), as well as open a planet pack to upgrade my flush further.
Skips give me a spectral pack, from which I use a Deja Vu to further upgrade my Jack of Diamonds. This card will be crucial for the Ante 8 boss.
The boss is once again cleared with a single flush.
Ante 7
This is the first ante requiring me to play 2 hands to win, as the scaling has outpaced my scoring. Luckily after playing the first flush, I draw a straight allowing me to score the required 70k points fairly quickly.
Ante 8
Once again, 2 hands are needed to score enough to win here. I sell my Blue Joker here to disable the Verdant Leaf effect and play 2 flushes. Funnily enough I draw a straight flush on the 2nd hand, but opt to play a regular flush instead as the straight flush would not score enough due to not being upgraded.
Potential Improvements
While I believe my route is pretty solid, there are many places where the paths can split and produce varying results down the line. Too many of them to test by hand, at least for me. Here's some ideas I had while working on it that I decided were too tedious to test.
- skip paintbrush - while paintbrush definitely saves discards, its possible that the voucher redeem animation loses too much time for it to be worth it.
- unlock throwback - throwback is a powerful joker that can be unlocked by quitting the run and continuing from the menu. this is the idea I've put the most time into testing as it would save a hand against the ante 7 and 8 boss blinds each, as well as maybe letting me skip a flush upgrade. unfortunately, despite the joker being in the seed on ante 4, i've not had success actually finding it. It's supposed to replace hologram in the shop, but I've only seen it appear one time, any other time the hologram appears instead.
- skip more packs - its possible using the sigil was redundant and i could put together flushes just fine without it, untested
- use more packs? - the standard pack i skip has some pretty powerful enhanced cards, maybe they show up later on and could save a hand? or allow me to play a smaller hand?
Suggested Screenshots
Frame 4100
