What you need to know
- Balatro, the addictive poker rogue-like game, has announced a collaboration with The Witcher, Vampire Survivors, Among Us and Dave the Diver in today’s Nintendo Direct.
- The ‘Friends of Jimbo’ update is available for free on all platforms right now, and customizes your cards with designs from these four games.
- No, you can’t romance Jimbo, so stop thinking about it.
I’d just managed to wean myself off the incredibly addictive Balatro, but the update that’s just dropped today at the Nintendo Direct is about to pull me right back in. Balatro, the roguelike poker game from solo developer LocalThunk that I’m still counting as my game of the year so far, just announced an amazing new collaboration.
The Balatro ‘Friends of Jimbo’ update is available right now, free to all platforms and brings back Witcher cards, but no, you can’t romance our Joker friend and collect his visage like in the original Witcher game — this is just a cosmetic enhancement to your existing decks. Cards from other franchises are included, Vampire Survivors, Dave the Diver and Among Us. When I saw the announcement I ran for my Steam Deck, but at first I was confused on how to get the cards, so here’s a quick how-to of where to activate them.
How to get the new Friends of Jimbo cards in Balatro
Step 1: Download the update to Balatro available now on Steam, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
Step 2: Go to Settings and Customize Deck.
Step 3: Here you can change your card sets to whatever franchise you want to include in the game. So for you can change your Spades to The Witcher designs for example, and Clubs to Vampire Survivors.
The update itself will not change the core gameplay of Balatro, but you will get some nice visual effects if the trailer is anything to go by. Why have Kings and Queens when you can have Geralts and Yennefers?
If you don’t own Balatro yet, what are you waiting for? It’s currently only $9.29 at CD Keys for hours, and I mean hours, of gameplay. A physical version, including physical cards, is coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox in September.