Solitaire
localthunk.com
Solitaire
1–10 of 164 posts
Re: Solitaire
#2Balatro is the only game where my score has maxed out the value of a double precision floating point number. And this isn't some crazy speedrunning strategy, it's very achievable for normal players. It's strangely compelling to make numbers go up and Balatro harnesses that better than any game I've played.
Re: Solitaire
#3I love this post a lot. Our entire world is perpetuated by platforms that are desperately begging us for engagement. It feels to me at least that I'm being pulled in a hundred directions, for all my time for all time.
My engagement with Balatro is not quite the same as localthunks. I go in phases where I play a lot and then put it down and walk away, and then weeks later I get back into it. But that also feels like it's in the spirit of what localthunk is talking about here. It's a comfort game. A pasttime rather than an addiction. Balatro is a stress reliever for me and I can jump in, play, and jump out and it's fine.
I wonder what our digital world would look like if more tools and platforms adopted an approach that was not clinging desperately for everything all the time all at once.
Re: Solitaire
#4Balatro is the only game where my score has maxed out the value of a double precision floating point number. And this isn't some crazy speedrunning strategy, it's very achievable for normal players. It's strangely compelling to make numbers go up and Balatro harnesses that better than any game I've played.
> It's strangely compelling to make numbers go up and Balatro harnesses that better than any game I've played.
More than Universal Paperclips?
Re: Solitaire
#5Reading this makes me sad actually, because I grew up on windows machines (starting with windows 3.1) and have so many memories of Solitaire that came shipped with windows. The deck variations, the little and big effects (like winning!) I played it so much as a grade schooler. Now that mac is so ubiquitous, most kids wont ever know the simple pleasure of playing solitaire.
Re: Solitaire
#6Don't fade in text on scroll. Just let the page scroll.
Re: Solitaire
#7Don't fade in text on scroll. Just let the page scroll.
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Re: Solitaire
#8Balatro is the only game where my score has maxed out the value of a double precision floating point number. And this isn't some crazy speedrunning strategy, it's very achievable for normal players. It's strangely compelling to make numbers go up and Balatro harnesses that better than any game I've played.
> It's strangely compelling to make numbers go up and Balatro harnesses that better than any game I've played. More than Universal Paperclips?
Unlike Universal Paperclips, I actually have a desire to play Balatro more than once.
It also requires more thought and strategy at every point rather than "wait for line to go up and click buy on anything available"
The biggest difference is that you can lose Balatro, and you can lose it very quickly either due to bad luck or bad strategy. In Universal Paperclips nothing matters, once you get the most basic automation both the game and you are proceeding towards the heat death of the universe and all you can do is accelerate it.
It's also a time boxed game - if you ignore the Civilization "one more turn" effect, any given game will be over within 20 minutes.
Re: Solitaire
#9It really does work that way. It’s a perfect game if you have ~25 minutes to kill. It’s fairly complex, but doesn’t really require player to keep much information between runs. I hate going back to a game after a few weeks only to discover that I no longer remember how to play it.
Re: Solitaire
#10What a thoughtful post. I think there is a narrative that localthunk is a "shitty programmer" (which he might very well be), but that by extension, it also means that he just got lucky and bumblefucked his way into massive success - almost as though he didn't know any better.
A post like this dispels that narrative - he clearly put a ton of thought into the design of that game and was incredibly intentional about where he wanted it to go.