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The poker roguelite Balatro has built a strong and loyal community of players thanks to the many different ways the game can surprise you during a run. Today–two weeks before the game launches on mobile devices–developer LocalThunk has seemingly confirmed a feature that looks like a glitch, but is instead working as intended.
This exploit, which was brought to light in a YouTube video by BelenosBear, involves the Misprint joker card, and more specifically, it centers around the seemingly random text that flashes in the Misprint’s ability text.
Basically, if you pause during a Balatro run, go to your collection of cards in the pause menu, and then go to Misprint, once in a while random numbers, letters, and symbols will flash in the ability text. As it turns out, those sequences aren’t random, and they actually tell you the top card of your deck through the numbers and letters that appear; in BelenosBear’s video, for example, a sequence that ends in “4S” produces the four of spades on the next draw, while “9H” produces the nine of hearts.
BelenosBear posted their video to X, and the official Balatro account acknowledged not only that the exploit exists, but also that it’s been a part of the game since launch. The account first posted a GIF of the game’s mascot Joker smiling, before following that up with the post below:
Balatro is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The mobile versions on both iOS and Android–along with a special Balatro+ version for Apple Arcade subscribers–launches September 26.
