Comment on PEGI gives Balatro an 18+ rating for gambling imagery
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days agoThe term Ante in the game is used instead of “round” or “level”. It’s a measure of how far you’ve gotten. Each “ante” is made up of three “stakes”, point totals you need to beat in a set number of hands played and cards discarded.
There’s no aspect of choosing how much you risk, or how much you “ante up”. You either beat the points goal (called “chips”) or you lose. There’s no playing of your hand against other hands, bluffing about how good your hand may be to convince others to fold, etc. It’s just you against the score goal.
The game has no elements where you stake chips for rewards or anything like that. It borrows basic elements of scoring mechanics from poker, and uses a lot of poker terms for other purposes, but the closest part to gambling is the ability to buy random card packs between rounds (to customize your deck instead of just having the standard 52 card deck).
You can learn most of this in about 5 minutes with the demo, or by taking some time to watch someone else play on youtube.
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Minor correction, the three stages in an “ante” are the “blinds”. The game instead uses “stake” to describe its ‘ascension’ system (where going to a higher stake adds difficulty modifiers to the game, for those who don’t know what I mean by that).