The official way to pronounce Balatro has been confirmed.
It is not clear immediately because of the way in which the name of the game is written if people should pronounce it as ‘Ba-Lah Tro’ (as in ‘tomato’) or ‘bah-la-tro’ (as in ‘Toe Camel’).
The journalist Stephen Totilo has finally finished the debate, with the final response published in the latest edition of his game archive bulletin.
Totilo asked Naman Budhwar, head of video marketing at the Balatro PlayStack editor, how people should say the name of the game.
“How is it pronounced … Ba-Lah Tro?” Totilo asked.
“Bah-la-Tro is how Listhunk says it,” Budhwar replied. “But it is a kind of ‘gif / jif’ situation, where you really don’t care how people say it.
“Then people can say ‘Ba-Lah Tro’, they can say ‘Bah-la-Tro’, but we decided to go with their pronunciation.”
“Bay-la-Tro?” Totilo joked. “Can I say that?”
“You can say Bay-La-Tro, yes,” Budhwar replied, maybe not seriously.
Balatro was one of the main success stories last year, since he sold 5 million copies in January 2025.
The game has won numerous awards, including the best independent game, the best indie debut and the best mobile game in the game awards.
He was also nominated for the game of the year in the Awards and won an outstanding achievement for an independent game, mobile game of the year and strategy / simulation game of the year at that ceremony.
It was also reduced in the game Developers Choice Awards this month, winning awards for the game of the year, the best debut, the best design and the innovation award.
The Balatro de VGC review said: “Balatro’s worst is that it is so good that we have to take some balloon time to write this review.”
“Balatro is a surprisingly addictive version of the poker that is completely impossible to leave,” we write. “Leaving aside the occasional difficulty, it is a simplistic genius that we will continue on our steam deck forever.”
