What are the best Balatro mods? The indie smash hit made by one person in his spare time, topped the best games lists across the board last year and was a Game of the Year nominee at The Game Awards. Can a game like this be made any better?
Well, whether or not you think there’s room for improvement, there are a bunch of cool Balatro mods that make mechanical and aesthetic changes to the card game. Previous official updates have added card variants inspired by the likes of Stardew Valley and Cult of the Lamb, but what if you want Sailor Moon or Pokemon in Balatro? Alternatively, we’ve found mods that add new cards, new challenges, and new rules. All of them are here, thanks to the community’s hard-working modders.
The best Balatro mods are:
Codex Arcanium
On top of adding new Jokers, Vouchers, Booster Packs, and more, the Codex Arcanium mod by Itayfeder adds a cool new consumable card: the Alchemical card.
There are 24 Alchemical cards to draw from, and they all relate to the current blind only, whether that’s increasing your hand or discard size for one round only, reducing the current blind amount, or temporarily upgrading poker hands. This adds a new depth to the card game, forcing you to choose exactly the right time to consume your Alchemical cards.
Mika’s Mod Collection
Among the biggest Baltro mods out there, Mika’s Mod Collection features 60 all-new Jokers, two brand-new Tarot cards, an extra Spectral card, and even some different deck types to try out. If you’ve seen enough of the vanilla cards on offer and have completed one too many standard antes, challenge yourself all over again with this huge mod pack.
Hidden Aces
Think of the Hidden Aces mod as Balatro easy mode. It adds a bunch of features that will make any run a piece of cake, including more discards and hands when you begin a run, more money per blind – negative cards now give you three extra slots instead of one. Perhaps not one for those looking for a challenge, but if you’re just starting out, or want to see how far you can go in the ante, it’s worth a go!
Balatro Multiplayer
We found this Balatro multiplayer mod that has been flying under the radar, and we definitely think it deserves shouting about. You might not immediately think Balatro works in MP, but this mod will have you thinking otherwise. With two modes, and two more on the way, you’re placed against your opponent in either Attrition, which turns every Boss Blind into a direct face-off, or Showdown. In the latter, play three normal antes to build up your deck before going head-to-head.
To find out more about this Balatro multiplayer mod and how to download it, join the mod’s official Discord channel.
Sailor Moon Planet Cards
It’s a natural fit and thankfully modder orangefroot realized this before we did, bringing Sailor Moon to Balatro in the form of new planet card designs. These cute cards naturally combine the faces of our favorite anime guardians, including Sailors Mercury, Venus, Neptune, and more, with Balatro’s existing planet cards. Not to be left out, Tuxedo Mask, Luna, and Artemis also appear in the Sailor Moon Planet Cards mod.
Pokermon
Some mods just make themselves. That’s not to say modder InertSteak hasn’t done some hard work we certainly couldn’t do, but ‘Pokermon’? Come on. Unlike the Sailor Moon mod above, Pokermon changes the appearance of cards but also adds a variety of new ones to boot. In fact, there are over 200 new Jokers to try. If you love them, you can even choose to turn off original Jokers and play exclusively with the Pokermon deck.
Fallout New Vegas Gomorrah Deck
Fans of Fallout New Vegas will love this nostalgic Balatro mod that turns your deck into the Gomorrah caravan deck. Gomorrah cards can be bought from merchants or found as loot, featuring gorgeous hand-crafted designs, and of course they look a little worse for wear given the apocalyptic circumstances. The Fallout New Vegas Gomorrah Deck mod cards are a fantastic recreation, and show Balatro stamps, multipliers, and other boosts, seamlessly combining the two games.
Lock the Deal
This Balatro mod is a dream, and we are forever thankful to LnxFCA and the creators of other similar mods for adding this delightful feature. We’ve all been there, your deck is coming along just how you like it and most of your favorite cards have been appearing, when that Joker or Voucher appears when you’re one or two dollars short.
Thanks to Lock the Deal, you never have to worry about that happening at the wrong time. Can’t afford it? Just lock it in until you can. While a couple of the mods below feel a little cheeky, we think this one is just acceptable enough as there’s still an element of RNG.
Preorder Cards
If you’re especially unlucky and never seem to get the shop items you want, you could try the Preorder Cards mod, though it’s definitely cheating. If you don’t mind that, download this mod and then hop into your collection menu before loading up a new game. By selecting all your favorite Jokers, Tarot cards, Planets, and Spectrals, they’ll appear in your next round’s shop in that order, and all for free.
There are a lot of customization options in this mod. For example, if you want to feel a little less like you’re cheating the system, you can turn off free items, and at least pay for your preordered cards. You also get a bunch of free rerolls to enable you to get all your preordered cards at the start of your game. You can turn this off, too. You can also choose whether to preorder Negative, Polychrome, and other special versions of your cards, so it’s up to you how much you take advantage of the service.
First Round Joker
If you’re intrigued by the Preorder Cards mod but think it’s a little OP, you can always try the First Round Joker mod instead. Rather than choosing a huge list of buffed cards, you can just pick a single Joker you want to see in your first shop rotation. Perhaps you want to kickstart your favorite deck, but don’t want to cheat too much. This mod is by the same creator as Lock the Deal, so we know they have our best interests at heart.
Ultimate Speedup Mod
There are four speed settings in the Balatro base game, but sometimes that’s just not enough. In the age of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and massively shortened attention spans, we just don’t want to sit through slow animations. With the Balatro Ultimate Speedup Mod by ssse2, you can make every Balatro animation run as fast (or slow) as you want. The mod’s default setting is 2.0, meaning the card game runs at twice the in-game speed. However, open the speedhax.cfg mod file in Notepad or similar, and you can change this to 3.0, 4.5, well, anything you want. Just beware that it could crash the game if you make it too fast.
Left Click Speeder-Upper
If you’d rather have more control over your in-game speed, Left Click Speeder-Upper by the appropriately named PortalinTime is a solid alternative. While the Ultimate Speedup Mod changes the speed as standard, this mod leaves the speed as you set it in-game, but gives you the option to speed things up by holding down your left mouse button. For example, as you get to higher antes and it’s taking that much longer to wrap up, just hit that left clicker and watch the cards fly around the screen at up to 16x speed.
SystemClock
We’ve all lost far too many hours to Balatro. Time just disappears when you’re building out your favorite deck. It might not always be a bad thing, but it is handy to have a clock overlay so you can keep a check on how long you’ve been playing. You don’t want to miss plans or appointments before you’re so deep into a game. SystemClock does just that, adding a nice little customizable clock to the Balatro interface.
Steamodded – how to install Balatro mods
Many of the mods above require Steamodded to be installed first, so ensure you check and download this Balatro mod loader. With Steammodded installed, you can drop the above mods into the new Balatro mods folder.
To install mods with Steamodded:
- Close Balatro if you have it open
- Locate C:\Users\
\AppData\Roaming\Balatro - Create a ‘Mods’ folder
- Download your chosen mod
- Extract the download, and put the single mod file into the directory
- Relaunch Balatro
We’re still loving Baltro, so we can’t wait to adopt some of these top Balatro mods, even if it’s just to change how it looks until the next Friends of Jimbo collab comes around. If you’re seeing Balatro Jokers when you close your eyes, it might be time to try some other indie games, and perhaps you’ll stumble upon this year’s biggest hit.
