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Solitaire

localthunk.com

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Re: Solitaire

#21

Post by havblue »

"To force players to get out of their comfort zone and explore the design of the game in a way they might not if this were a fully unguided gaming experience."

It's great how rogue like/lite games such as slay the spire and Hades have riffed on that concept. Guess what, you won't have the same power ups this time. You're going to have to learn to play the same game in a different way. So in Balatro you're playing draw poker in an attempt to build different hands based on your strategy.

Re: Solitaire

#22

Post by ziddoap »

>It’s now been over a year since launch and I am still playing Balatro almost daily. I play a couple runs before I go to bed

I think this is really important, especially for games. Play the game you make!

There's a fair number of games that I've played where the developer clearly has not sat down and played through the game as a player would. No skips, no custom developer-only starts or features, no rushing through sections "because I know what happens", etc. To be fair, though, these are often below $5 games on Steam, so I'm sure a chunk of them are cash grabs rather than an honest attempt at making a successful game.

Re: Solitaire

#23

Post by meheleventyone »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #16
mattnewton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard that assertion, I don’t know how anyone can play Balatro and not feel that it is a deeply intentional creation. I think localthunk would be the first to tell you they got lucky with how it found an audience outside of themselves, but everything in the game oozes polish and intention.

The assertions are more around code quality. Game design is wonderful. Apparently there are places where the code is like a thousand lines of if card_name then effect.

For a project with lots of variation being maintained by a single person that’s totally fine.

Re: Solitaire

#24

Post by modeless »

jsheard wrote: post #19
modeless wrote: post #2

Balatro 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.

If you want the numbers to go even more up, the Talisman mod reworks everything to use BigInts for practically unlimited number go up potential. It's mainly intended to be paired with other mods like Cryptid which add obscenely overpowered cards, but Talisman can be used on its own if you just want to attempt the normally unwinnable ante 39 and beyond in vanilla.

Wow you can do that in a mod? Crazy. I wondered if localthunk would do this or if it was actually kind of nice for the game to have a "kill screen" ending like the old arcade games.

Re: Solitaire

#25

Post by Trasmatta »

meheleventyone wrote: post #23
datadrivenangel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertions are more around code quality. Game design is wonderful. Apparently there are places where the code is like a thousand lines of if card_name then effect.

For a project with lots of variation being maintained by a single person that’s totally fine.

Yep, there are days I yearn for just having a super long set of if statements, vs the over-engineered messes that I deal with on a daily basis.

So many codebases end up impenetrable in the pursuit of fancy design patterns...

Re: Solitaire

#26

Post by netcraft »

santoshalper wrote: post #11
par wrote: post #5

Reading 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.

Don't worry, Windows is still far, far more ubiquitous. The bigger reason people don't play solitaire as much as they used to is that it is no longer the only game installed on their PC. So many people in the 90s learned solitaire playing it on a work from a lack of other options on their work PC. Now with the so many games on the web and your smartphone, you might not even try it. People give Microsoft a lot of shit…

ive always seen the reason MS included solitaire and minesweeper was to teach people how to use a mouse and a gui.

I can remember even in the early 2000s when we started installing PCs instead of green screen terminals at different locations having employees play solitaire as a way to get them used to their new computers and learning how to use a mouse.

Re: Solitaire

#27

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

havblue wrote: post #21

"To force players to get out of their comfort zone and explore the design of the game in a way they might not if this were a fully unguided gaming experience." It's great how rogue like/lite games such as slay the spire and Hades have riffed on that concept. Guess what, you won't have the same power ups this time. You're going to have to learn to play the same game in a different way. So in Balatro you're playing dra…

I mean, that might be the intent on paper, but when I was going through a game like Dead Cells, I still had specific weapons or layouts that I was especially effective with--and in practice that just meant that if I didn't manage to get my favorite bat or nun-chuck weapons to drop, there was a good chance I wasn't going to be able to complete that run.

Re: Solitaire

#28

Post by ksynwa »

ziddoap wrote: post #22

> It’s now been over a year since launch and I am still playing Balatro almost daily. I play a couple runs before I go to bed I think this is really important, especially for games. Play the game you make! There's a fair number of games that I've played where the developer clearly has not sat down and played through the game as a player would . No skips, no custom developer-only starts or features, no rushing through…

Reminds me of Miyazaki from FromSoft who said he doesn't play his own games.

Re: Solitaire

#29

Post by schnable »

This inspired me to play a round of Klondike for the first time in many years. Pretty fun! Probably slightly healthier than scrolling social media.

Re: Solitaire

#30

Post by cwizou »

superultra wrote: post #3

I 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 i…

> 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.

Exactly.

To me there are two specific things that gives it that stress reliever, jump in/out spirit of Solitaire :

- You know from the start you may not win every round.

- Things can instantly and dramatically turn one way or another.

I think both are perfectly captured in Balatro, and it manages to achieve it with a vastly more complex design.

And it manages to add more depth while keeping that formula with a large number of jokers that, depending on what you get at the start, will dictate a different type of playstyle.

Sure, you can develop some strategies over time (money), but you (usually) can't force the direction of a run (at least early on), you have to work with what you're given. It's truly a brillant design.

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