[HN Gopher] Solitaire
___________________________________________________________________
Solitaire
Author : goles
Score : 347 points
Date : 2025-02-27 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (localthunk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (localthunk.com)
| modeless wrote:
| 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.
| xnx wrote:
| > It's strangely compelling to make numbers go up and Balatro
| harnesses that better than any game I've played.
|
| More than Universal Paperclips?
| Arainach wrote:
| 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.
| jerf wrote:
| The "time boxing" is coming to be one of my favorite
| aspects of the roguelite genre. It's a nice structure for a
| combination of a deep and compelling game, that opens up at
| a reasonable speed, but also doesn't call for 80 hours to
| "finish" it. I like JRPGs but even so they quite often
| overstay their welcome. Death may wipe nearly all your
| progress but you can easily try again in another timebox.
|
| (I played some of the classic Roguelikes, and spent a lot
| of time with Angband, but that was one of their problems...
| winning still took many hours, could easily be dozens, and
| so death became _very_ scary. They were on to something,
| but the modern rebalancing of "hand it all out more
| quickly, and resolve the game in an hour or two and let
| them come back" seems a much more practical approach in a
| lot of ways.)
| RickHull wrote:
| I never played Angband but got into the closely related
| Sil. Totally agree on your characterization (and a fan of
| your HN posts for well over a decade).
| jsheard wrote:
| 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.
| modeless wrote:
| 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.
| jsheard wrote:
| The game is entirely written in Lua (on top of Love2D) so
| it's pretty malleable.
| enneff wrote:
| There's a very active modding scene:
| https://github.com/jie65535/awesome-balatro
| superultra wrote:
| 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 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.
| cwizou wrote:
| > 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.
| ChainnChompp wrote:
| > - You know from the start you may not win every round. > -
| Things can instantly and dramatically turn one way or
| another.
|
| Nailed it. A good rogue-like deck-builder should always have
| these qualities. My favorite for a few years now - Slay the
| Spire - lives by this.
| sdwr wrote:
| I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. Balatro
| is building on 50 years of addiction-seeking game design.
| Everything from the sound effects, to the random round rewards,
| to the pacing of unlocks is optimized to be as attention-
| grabbing and dopamine-releasing as possible.
|
| It's like praising Coca-Cola for not tasting as sweet as Pepsi
| banannaise wrote:
| It's a roguelike deckbuilder. The randomness is necessary to
| the genre.
|
| I think you've missed something important: none of these
| elements in Balatro are monetized. The only way the developer
| makes more money is through players telling other players how
| fun the game is, which convinces them to buy it.
| bscphil wrote:
| > players telling other players how fun the game is
|
| I wonder if we've collectively been trained to perceive
| addictiveness as fun. It's good that the developer isn't
| being directly monetizing eyeball-hours, but when users
| have grown to expect that specific dopamine hit that proves
| addictive, you end up having to include it anyway.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| There's also nothing timed in balatro, so there's no need
| for the next game to be _now_.
| mfro wrote:
| I think both of these are true. Balatro is a like a finely
| honed blade of dopamine harvesting -- it truly does build on
| the most addictive facets of gaming we have discovered thus
| far. It is also laudable in the ethos of its designer,
| expressed through the game. As others have said, there is not
| and will never be monetization, per LocalThunk's distaste for
| gambling(we can be pedantic and argue that at the core of
| each roguelike is a gambling aspect but).
|
| I think there is a fine line here between the cynicist 'never
| indulge' and the consoomer/accelerationist 'do as you will'
| endgame wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that despite all that (the
| escalating lights and noise as your score ticks up, and the
| hypnotic effect of the sound slowing down and speeding up
| when you fail/restart the run, are two big examples), I seem
| to be the only person who hit a wall with Balatro. I enjoyed
| it for a few days, saw what grinding out all of the
| jokers/stickers would be like, and put it down. Not in an
| insulted way, but in a "I've had a good meal, I'm full, and
| I'm happy to leave the rest of my plate" way. I find this
| particularly interesting because other games do have an
| ability to grab me by the throat.
|
| Perhaps it was too overt?
| ronyeh wrote:
| Maybe it's a comfort game for you. But it's an addiction for
| me. I need to stop, so I can find something else to get
| addicted to.
| bombcar wrote:
| Hello, it's me, Factorio.
| par wrote:
| 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.
| santoshalper wrote:
| 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, but including bundled
| games on what was at the time primarily a business OS was bold,
| controversial, and brilliant.
| noirscape wrote:
| Windows Solitaire mostly died because Microsoft strangled it
| with microtransactions and ads during the Windows 8 days.
|
| What went from a simple minigame you could fire up at any
| time got transformed into this monstrosity that kept forcing
| ads on you, urging you to buy premium versions, adding
| "engagement" nonsense (daily missions) and selling you back
| the same features that came free in the Windows 7 version.
| cwizou wrote:
| > including bundled games on what was at the time primarily a
| business OS was bold, controversial, and brilliant.
|
| Brillant, sure, but not completely sure it was controversial
| or bold, they have stated that it was primarily included in
| Windows 3.0 to help people get used to the new paradigms (for
| Windows) of the mouse and drag and drop, see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Solitaire
|
| > People give Microsoft a lot of shit
|
| Well they didn't help themselves by shoving ads and
| subscriptions in all of those games : https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Microsoft_Solitaire_Collection...
| netcraft wrote:
| 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.
| npteljes wrote:
| Forget Mac, people, kids play on their phones first. And yeah,
| it's far from the offline simple please that is solitaire. I
| wonder what they'll say when they reach this stage of life.
| Today's popular things seem soulless to me, but I'm sure they
| are connecting to it (and to things I don't know about) just
| the same as I did back then.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Don't fade in text on scroll. Just let the page scroll.
| exitb wrote:
| It 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.
| kenny11 wrote:
| I thought I was the only one with this problem.
|
| I can still remember how to play the original Doom after all
| these years (and where all the secrets are!) but the modern
| editions have so many controls and weapon modes that if I don't
| play it for a month I don't remember how anything works.
| IsTom wrote:
| > 25 minutes
|
| Personally I've had ~1 hour runs often. Am I just a slow player
| or am I missing something? For context I've been playing for
| less than two weeks and haven't yet beat ante 11 (7M feels like
| a big step in difficulty).
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Nah, it's pretty common for runs to take that long,
| especially if you're going into Endless. Some of the top
| Balatro streamers I watch will frequently have runs that take
| that long (or longer).
|
| It does help to increase the game speed. I've got mine up to
| max speed (but I played it at normal speed for quite awhile,
| while I got used to the mechanics).
| jerf wrote:
| As you go up the antes, the number of viable strategies
| decreases, until it narrows down to just one or two a number
| of antes quite a ways before the "end".
|
| IIRC localthunk has said that he considers the normal "beat
| Ante 8" of Balatro to be the "real" Balatro and that the
| "beat all the higher antes" is mostly there to satisfy people
| who want it but it is not what he is optimizing for. In
| contrast to a lot of Roguelikes where "beating the game" is
| more "an offramp for those who want to call it a day but
| technically just the beginning of the 'real' experience".
| Both of which are fine goals, IMHO, but I think it helps to
| know that Balatro's additional antes are _not_ designed to be
| in the latter category.
| enneff wrote:
| Different people play at different speeds. And some builds
| require more thought than others. I find that it takes about
| half an hour on average for me to win a run (reach ante 9).
| santoshalper wrote:
| What 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.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| In what quarters is that narrative? Surely one only has to play
| Balatro for an hour or two to understand the incredible game
| design effort that underpins it all, which is brought so
| vibrantly to life by the music, art, animations, and all the
| rest of it.
|
| I can't imagine someone appreciating all this and still
| managing to poo poo it over a few bugs or maybe some quibbles
| about it having been built in Lua.
| dilDDoS wrote:
| People that mention this are usually referring to this chunk
| of the source code:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/s/KmEWRILR1q
|
| My assumption is that a lot of the people that look at small
| chunks of code and judge someone's programming ability are
| people who have only worked in corporate environments and
| have never had to build a large project on their own, and
| don't have any understanding of the effort it takes to make a
| game like Balatro by yourself. Maybe that's an unfair
| judgment. But so is calling LocalThunk a "shitty programmer"
| over some questionable if-else logic.
| IsTom wrote:
| It's verbose and could be simplified, but also looks like
| something you write once and never look at again. If it
| works it makes no sense to spend any more time on it.
| slongfield wrote:
| People love to dunk on hacky looking gamedev code. Some of
| it is pretty ugly, e.g, VVVVVV's famous gigantic switch
| statement, but if it works and makes a fun game, that's the
| actually important part.
| AnIrishDuck wrote:
| Yeah, working on a game myself and ... sometimes you just
| gotta do stuff like that.
|
| Working on a game solo requires juggling several wildly
| different disciplines at the same time. Sometimes you're in
| "game designer" mode, you need to fix a bug or add a
| feature, and you bonk in the caveman thing that obviously
| works.
|
| Solo gamedev is basically the "startups should accumulate
| technical debt" meme on steroids. As long as you can
| understand the code, nobody cares about how it looks. Only
| how the game plays.
| mattnewton wrote:
| 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.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| 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.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| For a project with lots of variation being maintained by a
| single person that's totally fine.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| 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...
| npteljes wrote:
| I think that too fancy code is just as bad as the
| original if-else spaghetti, but then even worse, because
| the patterns are abstract now as well.
| npteljes wrote:
| Bad code can have a really high cognitive load to
| maintain. Just to illustrate what bad means, take a look
| at this:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/programminghorror/comments/1cb6r
| ca/...
|
| I can see that having even bits of modification impacts
| lots of lines, where if written just a bit more saner, it
| could impact just a few.
|
| Of course everyone is absolutely free to do the things
| however they want on their project. It's just that bad
| code, and bad choices bite back sometimes really badly.
| Project Zomboid is built in LUA for example, and it
| shows, it's a horrorshow not just to play, but to develop
| it as well. Their programmers spend a lot of time with
| just refactoring things. Besides functionality,
| maintainability should be a huge focus in my experience,
| so that the devs don't hate life if they have to touch
| the code again.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The example you post is out of context and maybe a bit
| overly verbose but again it's one guy maintaining it and
| is perfectly readable. Does anyone really struggle to
| understand that?
|
| I'm back working on a twenty plus year old codebase (and
| game) that's ~3 millions loc and would kill for something
| simple like that rather than some of the overabstracted
| crimes lurking within.
| AnIrishDuck wrote:
| Yeah, without context criticism of this code is silly.
|
| What if this wasn't always how cards worked? What if the
| mapping was (at one point in development) not
| straightforward? Or localthunk had some ideas and wanted
| to leave the door open to a more complex mapping scheme?
| bongothrowaway wrote:
| Undertale's code base is apparently no better. For games I
| don't think code quality is nearly as paramount; there's
| not a whole lot of maintenance going on there, though this
| doesn't apply to live service games.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Even if the underlying code is "bad", who cares? There are far
| more important skills in indie game development then
| programming ability. I'd much rather play an interesting, well-
| designed game with a few bugs and messy code over a well-
| programmed but boring game.
| npteljes wrote:
| He clearly comes across as a conscious game designer as well.
| And programming doesn't need to be good on today's machines.
| Many of the indie successes are shit software, like Minecraft,
| Valheim, Cities Skylines, Project Zomboid, and I'm sure there's
| many others. Great product design and PR are infinitely more
| important than software quality.
| bbkane wrote:
| I love Solitaire - it's such a nice way to kill a few minutes
| while waiting for something else.
|
| Unfortunately, many solitaire phone apps are filled with ads,
| slow, or have clunky controls.
|
| A few years ago, however, I found
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.tobiasbielefeld.solitaire... .
| Its free and open source, and quite fast with nice shortcuts to
| move the cards.
|
| I love this app and have played multiple Klondike/Spider
| Solitaire games a day using it. I wholeheartedly recommend it if
| you want a simple game of Solitaire in the same spirit as the
| post.
| diggan wrote:
| Was looking for this on iPhone as well some weeks ago, and came
| across a Solitaire that is included in Apple Arcade that works
| really well, doesn't have any ads or other distractions, just
| plain Solitaire.
|
| And another bonus is that Balatro (which the submission author
| created) is included in Apple Arcade too, which was the
| original reason I got Arcade.
| schnable wrote:
| Apple Arcade is great for avoiding all the adware and in-app
| payment crap.
| foobarian wrote:
| This is why I play it with actual physical cards. I learned it
| as kid so partly it's a comfort ritual, and partly the tactile
| interaction is very soothing.
| matsemann wrote:
| It also "forces" you to keep playing when it gets tough, as a
| complete shuffle plus new setup isn't just a simple click
| away. It's also nice to get off the screen for a while.
|
| I recently bought a smaller deck of cards, like half or three
| quarters of the size of a normal deck or so. Makes it easier
| to play without needing a huge table.
| sl3dge78 wrote:
| I highly recommend the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection.
| Greatly designed solitaire games. I play them every day on my
| commute to work.
| rezmason wrote:
| Zachtronics Solitaire Collection inspired me to begin
| experimenting with Solitaire variants, and hopefully
| Balatro's well-deserved success will stoke people's curiosity
| in similar titles.
|
| For now, my web prototype lets you choose the numbers of
| suits, colors, ranks, columns, and multiples of cards drawn
| from the deck. It's a start. I invite HN to explore the
| Klondike Extended Universe:
|
| https://rezmason.github.io/patience
| motes wrote:
| I was gonna recommend the same one. I wanna add that Hempuli
| (Baba is You, Noita) also made a solitaire collection
| inspired by Zachtronics. It's just 3 bucks on his itchio and
| it's something I play while I have my coffee.
|
| https://hempuli.itch.io/a-solitaire-mystery
|
| Funny enough it has a "Royal Flush Solitaire" where you make
| poker hands and your goal is to reach 240 points.
|
| Binary Solitaire and Transformation are my favorites.
| jefurii wrote:
| The Solitaire Mystery is also the name of a very
| interesting novel that explores all kinds of permutations
| of the cards, suits, etc, etc, by Jostein Gaarder, author
| of Sophie's World.
| skeaker wrote:
| Thirding this recommendation, Fortune's Favor solitaire and
| Shenzen solitaire from this collection are some of my
| favorite variants ever. Either of them would be worth the
| price of admission alone.
| joemi wrote:
| I absolutely love the Zachtronics solitaires. I play at least
| one a day on my phone. That said, I wish they were slightly
| better designed for phones, since the text/images and touch
| targets can be a little small. It's too bad Zachtronics is no
| more -- it'd be nice if they were able to do some UI updates.
| cglong wrote:
| I heard from an obscure source (a former Zachtronics intern
| in a stream chat) that they're currently building a new
| game
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| This is the one I use too. I like how many variants it has as
| well.
| palsecam wrote:
| Using a lightweight PWA (progressive web app) is also an
| option: https://FreeSolitaire.win (self-plug).
|
| Doesn't generate unwinnable games[1] & detects dead-ends. Works
| offline after the first visit. No ads until game over, and they
| aren't obtrusive.
|
| Often lauded on HN, e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41972075 or
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42031052.
|
| 1: The probability that a random deal is unwinnable is ~20%.
| Wikipedia has a section on the subject:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_(solitaire)#Probabili...
| rpigab wrote:
| Nice! I should add only-winnable generation to my own
| Solitaire, it's adfree, although it has extremely clunky
| controls.
|
| Well, it was designed for the terminal, try the webconsole
| version here: https://rpigab.gitlab.io/solitaire-cli/
|
| Source: https://gitlab.com/rpigab/solitaire-cli
| MattSayar wrote:
| One nice side benefit of DNS-level adblocking (pi-hole, etc) is
| that a lot of mobile games never end up showing ads. It doesn't
| always work perfectly, but in particular I play a euchre game
| on my phone that frequently asks me to "pay X to play with no
| ads" and every time I think "What ads?"
|
| That said, sometimes I pay to support the developer if I like
| the game. Sucks when a game I like doesn't offer the "remove
| ads" option.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > I think that's one of the reasons why there isn't a player
| character, health, or classic 'enemies' in the game as well.
|
| This was the thing I found most interesting when I started
| playing the game, because it's so different from almost all games
| these days (especially roguelikes). I initially found it off-
| putting (part of me wanted more context for what was happening),
| but the more I played the more it made sense. And his comparison
| to Solitaire really drives that home.
|
| But also, despite the lack of a character or enemies, the game
| has a huge amount of character, which I think was critical for
| its success.
| havblue wrote:
| "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.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| 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.
| jerf wrote:
| Non-twitch based roguelites make it somewhat easier to learn
| and deploy those alternate strategies in my experience
| because you can read a bit of a clue online, think about it,
| and then play through a round slowly and thoughtfully. In an
| action game, you know, you pick up the sickle weapon for the
| first time and you may have literally seconds of experience
| with it before you die.
|
| I spent some substantial time in Enter the Gungeon but have
| to admit I kind of bounced off of it for this reason... I
| don't have the raw time to compensate for the fact that the
| guns require certain muscle memory for each of them, and the
| bosses need certain muscle memory for each of them, and the
| combinations require certain muscle memory... I enjoyed my
| time and you might say I got close enough to see the light at
| the end of the tunnel, but I just don't have the time to get
| there in a game where fractions of a second count.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _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.
| ksynwa wrote:
| Reminds me of Miyazaki from FromSoft who said he doesn't play
| his own games.
| ekianjo wrote:
| He would not be able to beat the first boss probably
| monadINtop wrote:
| He's beaten nameless king, pre-nerf radahn, melania etc.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| No, he said he doesn't play them AFTER they release. But he
| plays them constantly when they're in development. One of the
| difficulty rules at FromSoft is that each boss and area has
| to be beatable by Miyazaki (which he said is a good baseline,
| because he likes challenge but doesn't consider himself good
| at games).
| ksynwa wrote:
| I checked and you are right. Thanks for the correction.
| svelle wrote:
| The story of the Hotline Miami 2 devs comes to mind where they
| mentioned that they play tested the game at half speed a lot of
| the times, which, including many other factors, contributes to
| the game being way harder than the first part.
|
| See: https://youtu.be/IcgmmBEEHsk?t=1427
| schnable wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway019254 wrote:
| This game is freaking addicting. I had to uninstall it.
| saulpw wrote:
| It was for me too, but only for about a month or so. Once I got
| 19 of 20 achievements (and the last one is nigh-impossible), I
| lost interest, and haven't played it since. (Though this post
| is tempting me to try a game or two with a different non-
| addicted attitude!)
|
| This is in stark contrast with Slay the Spire, which I've been
| playing compulsively since 2019.
| dilDDoS wrote:
| Great read, I always love reading about the thoughts and
| intentions behind game design.
|
| > I play a couple runs before I go to bed
|
| I do see the relaxing component of the game once you've got the
| hang of it and are playing on white stake. But I do feel like the
| game encourages you to take on more difficult/frustrating stakes
| and decks, so for someone working on gold stake for the black
| deck for example, it would absolutely not be something to play
| before bed (unless you're in the mood to cry yourself to sleep)
| lacoolj wrote:
| honestly without context for what this blog is for, or a link to
| the things it references (klondike/solitaire?) it's hard to want
| to read the full thing
| aaroninsf wrote:
| It's always interesting to drop into these posts, especially when
| they are at the top of the HN list,
|
| and have zero context. Who is this person? What is localthunk?
| What is "Balatro"?
|
| A reminder there are subpopulations online within which <things>
| are well known and active references.
|
| And others, like mine, where <things> have not once come up.
|
| I think like podcasts, mobile games are a thing that is just
| totally invisible to me and <my circle>.
| skyyler wrote:
| If you spent as long reading search results for "Balatro" as
| you did writing this comment, you would have enough context to
| understand what localthunk and balatro are.
|
| I find your musing on the topic interesting, if only as a
| reminder that people have largely forgotten to help themselves
| to the free information that surrounds us.
| dr-smooth wrote:
| I don't think that was his point. He wasn't asking
| specifically what Balatro was. He just marvels at the fact
| that there are so many niche interests out there that their
| very existence is unknown to him.
|
| Your statement about people having forgotten how to help
| themselves to information is borderline insulting. A little
| like sending somebody a "let me google that for you" link.
|
| Or maybe I've misunderstood what _you_ meant.
| skyyler wrote:
| Maybe you have.
|
| Either way, I don't feel a conversation with you is going
| to be productive.
|
| Have a nice day! (Or don't, I'm not your boss)
| jjice wrote:
| TLDR: Balatro is a roguelike card game where in you make poker
| hands to score points. You can enhance cards and get jokers
| that have more effects.
|
| It wont a ton of awards this past year (it's just about a year
| old) and was incredibly well received.
|
| Localthunk is the developer. I believe he did everything for
| the PC version himself (except maybe a single joker's art). He
| has a publisher that helped port to pretty much every other
| platform you can think of.
| saint_yossarian wrote:
| The soundtrack was also commissioned.
| atrus wrote:
| YouTube is such a great, single-source, area for this. It's
| wild how many 10m+ subscriber youtube channels that _I 've
| never even heard of_. So much variety in the world :)
| rkuykendall-com wrote:
| There are a lot of things I do not think are good uses of AI,
| but dropping into circles you are not apart of and getting your
| bearings is one of my favorite use cases.
|
| The other day my friends were talking about a "nemesis
| mechanic" in a game that was good but patented and never used?
| I asked GPT about it because I just wanted a short summary of
| what it was and why it was cool.
|
| It looks like it would have worked here too:
| What is localthunk? What is "Balatro"? 1.
| LocalThunk: LocalThunk is a pseudonymous game developer known
| for creating the poker-themed roguelike deck-building game
| Balatro. The developer operates under this pseudonym, which is
| derived from a method of declaring variables in the game
| development framework they use, Love . 2.
| Balatro: This is a game developed by LocalThunk, released in
| 2024. Balatro is a poker-themed roguelike deck-building game
| that involves playing poker hands to score points and defeat
| various challenges. It gained significant acclaim, winning
| multiple awards for its innovative gameplay and design .
| For more details, you can refer to the Wikipedia page on
| Balatro. No specific standalone information on LocalThunk was
| retrieved beyond the association with Balatro.
|
| ```
| momojo wrote:
| > My fantasy was that I was playing this weird game many years
| later on a lazy Sunday afternoon; I play a couple of runs, enjoy
| my time for about an hour, then set it down and continue the rest
| of my day. I wanted it to feel evergreen, comforting, and
| enjoyable in a very low-stakes way.
|
| I will pay money for more games like this. I want more games like
| this.
|
| I could write an essay on this beautiful breath of fresh air.
| Balatro, like many beautiful pieces of software, is defined by
| what it is and _isn 't_. No ads, no screwy Skinner box mechanics.
| Just wholesome gameplay.
| flocciput wrote:
| When I was a kid, if I couldn't be on the computer for whatever
| reason I'd occupy myself with a pack of cards. I'd play solitaire
| (Klondike) over and over. I would vary the draw count and see how
| that affected the game. I'd sort the cards beforehand and see if
| that made it any easier or harder to win. I'd try to find the
| optimal order the cards would have to be in before dealing for
| the game to be won in the least number of steps. Ultimately I
| figured Solitaire was just a roundabout way of sorting a deck of
| cards and started messing with other sorting methods. I still,
| every time I see a pack of cards, feel that urge to just sort and
| sort and sort. It wasn't even "fun", I was just so desperate for
| mental stimulation.
|
| Anyways, love Balatro!
| evmar wrote:
| Sorry in advance if it's too off-topic, but if you want to play
| the Windows 2000 Solitaire I have it kind of working in my web-
| based emulator here:
|
| https://evmar.github.io/retrowin32/run.html?exe=sol.exe&dir=...
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Interesting to see this here. I've commented a few times on HN
| about recently getting into card games (e.g. various solitaire
| games, gin rummy, presidents, spades, trash...etc) and domino
| games. It's a lot of fun, social (even solitaire as we teach each
| other new versions), and mentally engaging. There's no screen and
| it all just feels less wasteful in some weird way.
|
| Board game night would do the same thing, but there's something
| beautiful about how much variety you can get out of a single deck
| of cards or some double-six dominos. There's no setup or 50 page
| rulebook required either. Most card games I just watch a YouTube
| video and then just remember how to play for years.
| bombcar wrote:
| What you're looking for is Bridge. THAT is a card game you can
| teach someone the basics of in an evening, and still be
| learning more 3 decades later.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| In terms of the low stakes feel, I think calling it a "boss
| blind" is really the only thing that I could possibly point to
| critically.
|
| It's amazing how that one word can change the entire vibe. It
| evokes a much more serious feel to it for me. Not sure what I'd
| call it, but I wonder if a different word would suddenly alter
| the whole vibe just a bit more towards that stated goal in the
| first paragraph.
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