After playing Balatro, even after quitting the game and quitting Steam, my desktop is darkened, as if the brightness is turned down. Brightness is still set to the highest. It's as if dark mode was turned on, and only fixed by restarting the PC. Any thoughts?

The same thing just happened to me, I didn't realise it was related!

For some reason the only sounds that I can hear while playing are the basic tick noises for clicks and the noise when you beat a blind. I can only assume there's supposed to be more, and I don't get any music at all.

I've checked my in-game audio settings, and the volume sliders are up and all my other system sounds are working, other games sound fine, etc.

Any ideas for how to fix this? Game is still super fun, but I feel like I'm missing part of the experience.

Originally posted by 𝙎𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙪𝙢 ⑨:

I managed to fix the sound, you need to download the openal binaries https://www.openal-soft.org/openal-binaries/ , then in the
zip, take the file "soft_oal.dll" in bin/win32 and to rename it "OpenAL32.dll" and replace the one present in the game files.

This worked for me

Same - never had this issue in the demo.

I am experiencing the same issue as the OP which I did not have in the demo. Only the ticks/clicks from SFX is available, no music and no other SFX.

Originally posted by Brock and Load:

Originally posted by 𝙎𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙪𝙢 ⑨:

I managed to fix the sound, you need to download the openal binaries https://www.openal-soft.org/openal-binaries/ , then in the
zip, take the file "soft_oal.dll" in bin/win32 and to rename it "OpenAL32.dll" and replace the one present in the game files.

This worked for me

Following these steps and the game does not even load when I hit the run button from steam library. It crashes immediately. I tried the latest binary zip 1.23.1 and the 1.23.0 one and in both instances after I extracted, renamed and replaced in the game files, the game does no load.

If anyone else has any comments/thoughts about it, please feel free to share.

Originally posted by Tass:

I am experiencing the same issue as the OP which I did not have in the demo. Only the ticks/clicks from SFX is available, no music and no other SFX.

Originally posted by Brock and Load:

This worked for me

Following these steps and the game does not even load when I hit the run button from steam library. It crashes immediately. I tried the latest binary zip 1.23.1 and the 1.23.0 one and in both instances after I extracted, renamed and replaced in the game files, the game does no load.

If anyone else has any comments/thoughts about it, please feel free to share.

Fixed by using the bin/win64 folder .dll and not the bin/win32 one as the steps mentioned.

Originally posted by Tass:

Originally posted by Tass:

I am experiencing the same issue as the OP which I did not have in the demo. Only the ticks/clicks from SFX is available, no music and no other SFX.



Following these steps and the game does not even load when I hit the run button from steam library. It crashes immediately. I tried the latest binary zip 1.23.1 and the 1.23.0 one and in both instances after I extracted, renamed and replaced in the game files, the game does no load.

If anyone else has any comments/thoughts about it, please feel free to share.

Fixed by using the bin/win64 folder .dll and not the bin/win32 one as the steps mentioned.

This also worked for me! Thanks for the help everyone.

I can't mark my own post as the answer but here it is:

Originally posted by 𝙎𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙪𝙢 ⑨:

I managed to fix the sound, you need to download the openal binaries https://www.openal-soft.org/openal-binaries/ , then in the
zip, take the file "soft_oal.dll" in bin/win32 and to rename it "OpenAL32.dll" and replace the one present in the game files.

However, for me and another user, we needed to use the dll from the bin/win64 folder of the downloaded zip file.

Having the same audio issue but I am dense and not able to understand what to do with the directions mentioned. Would anyone be willing to make the directions a little more easy going?

Originally posted by Schewby:

Having the same audio issue but I am dense and not able to understand what to do with the directions mentioned. Would anyone be willing to make the directions a little more easy going?

You'll want to download the most recent file from that link. then open it and go into the bin folder, then into the win64 folder. You will copy the soft_oal.dll file then go to the Balatro game files and replace the OpenAL32 with the soft_oal.dll file. You will then need to rename soft_oal.dll to OpenAL32.dll and then it should work.

Hoping this gets fixed! Love the game but it's a hassle having to restart my computer every time I play.

Sounds like the same issue another thread was about. Except there they said it was the game turning off HDR, which if that's what's causing it for you you should be able to just toggle the HDR setting in Windows to get it back to normal. Still less than ideal, but better than having to reboot.

Same issue. Trying to play windowed mode, but it keeps flashing the brightness. I even have auto-HDR turned off.

Yeah same issue with it messing with HDR