guandor/balatro-lite

Balatro Lite is a modified version of Balatro, the poker-inspired roguelike deck building game. It adapts the game for handheld screens, such as those on portable gaming devices. The project installs alongside the original Balatro port and keeps its own save files separate, so you can switch between the two without conflict. The main focus is making the game work better on small displays. The playfield fills the entire screen using the device's native aspect ratio, which makes everything appear larger. The desktop layout's sidebar becomes a single top status bar. The shop screen loses its large animated sign so the full storefront fits on screen at once. Card descriptions use a larger, clearer font called Nunito across all devices. The project also reduces the visual effects to improve performance on less powerful hardware. CRT effects, bloom, shadows, and screen shake are turned off. Two full-screen shaders are simplified, and the animated background is cached rather than redrawn every frame. The developer notes plainly that the result looks less polished than the original, but runs better and suits small screens. To install it, you need to own Balatro on Steam. You copy the project files into your ports folder, then copy your game file from Steam into the project's folder. On Windows, this means copying the game's executable. On macOS, you copy a file called Balatro.love from inside the application package. The first time you launch the project, it builds a patched copy of the game, which takes a moment to complete. If you want to turn the performance changes back off, you can edit a configuration file to disable the shader and performance optimizations, then delete the patched copy so it gets rebuilt without those changes.