If you somehow haven’t fallen down the Balatro hole just yet, that slope is about to get a whole lot slippier. The mesmerising roguelike spin on poker is easy enough to lose an entire afternoon to by itself, but now it’s been combined with the granddaddy of all computer-related procrastination: classic Windows Solitaire.
Balatro ‘95 is a mod created by Duncan Molloy (who, it must be said, is a truly excellent tabletop and board game designer over at Rebellion Unplugged by trade) that makes a simple yet deadly – to your free time anyway – change. The mod swaps out Balatro’s original card faces – based on a standard deck of 52 playing cards – and most of their backs for those taken direct from the Solitaire included in Windows 95 (via developer Daniel Ricci’s faithful remake of the mid-nineties productivity-destroyer, itself a dire threat to my hope of focusing during the workday).
The mod is nice and easy to install, requiring little more than popping the images into Balatro’s textures folder. Molloy has also created an accessible version of the cards using a high-contract variant, which will toggle on automatically when playing using the high contrast mode.
Simple as that, but utterly lethal to the chance of thinking about anything other than Balatro. Not to mention, it gave me a wonderful dose of nostalgia looking back over the low-res card backs burned into my retinas from hours of misspent youth spent dragging cards around a fuzzy CRT screen – I’m especially partial to the hilltop castle silhouette, boxy robot and clownfish, myself. Go on, go treat yourself.
