[HN Gopher] Balatro for the Nintendo E-Reader
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       Balatro for the Nintendo E-Reader
        
       Author : arantius
       Score  : 79 points
       Date   : 2025-06-21 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mattgreer.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mattgreer.dev)
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | This is what I need more of from the internet.
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | The author also wrote about his experience making a space shooter
       | game for the E-Reader:
       | 
       | https://mattgreer.dev/blog/making-a-shooter-for-the-ereader/
        
       | sram1337 wrote:
       | re: numbers, you could store them as integers, but just encoded
       | as 10 times their value. So 1.5 becomes 15.
       | 
       | Would reduce max score to 400M and you'd have to round 0.25 up or
       | down. Would probably want to drop the 0.01 cards too.
       | 
       | super cool project
        
         | odo1242 wrote:
         | Yea - this is basically "fixed point but not binary" and it
         | would totally work.
        
       | EA-3167 wrote:
       | I also love Balatro, and can say that's shockingly good work
       | especially considering the limitations of the platform. Clearly a
       | labor of love, and I love it.
        
       | Nate75Sanders wrote:
       | Guy made it for the C64, even with good music!
       | 
       | https://ko-ko74.itch.io/balatro-for-the-commodore-64-c64
        
       | fisherjeff wrote:
       | This was painful to read, and I am so sorry for the author.
       | 
       | I was fortunate enough to break my Balatro addiction before it
       | had gotten this far along, but others are not so lucky.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | What about this reads as addiction? This is clearly a tech
         | demo, not something someone would do to let themselves play
         | more of the game.
        
           | poolnoodle wrote:
           | I believe the comment you replied to was meant in a humorous
           | way.
        
         | jimbob45 wrote:
         | And others are like me who wanted to play but couldn't because
         | of the nauseating effects of the graphics.
        
       | Dwedit wrote:
       | If you're hitting sprite limits because you used up all the
       | sprite slots, you're doing something wrong. Sprites are for
       | moving objects that need to exist outside of grid alignment. For
       | steady objects, put them in a background layer. If you need a
       | different alignment than 8x8 tiles, you can use two overlapping
       | layers to get 4-pixel horizontal alignment instead.
        
       | im3w1l wrote:
       | I think floating point is viable - balatro doesn't exactly
       | perform billions of floating point operations per second.
        
       | kinduff wrote:
       | While I understand the sentiment of Playstack and LocalThunk to
       | take down these kind of ports, it's a shame for the community
       | because this will only make the game grow more.
        
         | geoffpado wrote:
         | It doesn't sound like they did? The author seems to be
         | proactively not releasing out of _respect_ for LocalThunk, not
         | out of fear. (And certainly not because they've already been
         | sent a takedown or anything.)
        
           | kinduff wrote:
           | Because he didn't published it, but there are other similar
           | ports that have been taken down.
           | 
           | For example, this C64 port was taken down: https://ko-
           | ko74.itch.io/balatro-for-the-commodore-64-c64
        
         | ronsor wrote:
         | The clear solution is to not copy every aspect of the original
         | and also release your port under a different name.
        
         | wavemode wrote:
         | What legal standing would they even have, if the game were
         | simply named something different from "Balatro"? Game mechanics
         | aren't copyrightable, and the game assets are literally just
         | playing cards...
        
       | anyfoo wrote:
       | I'm one of the people that don't "get" Balatro. I do get how to
       | play it (to a certain level at least), and I've certainly been
       | drawn to a bunch of rogue-like games, some of which I still play
       | (Into the Breach for example), but Balatro is just... too
       | distilled for me, to a point where it's almost absurd.
       | 
       | It's literally "number go up", there's barely any "fluff", and
       | that bugs me for a reason.
       | 
       | In that regard, it reminds me of cookie clicker, although it
       | distills different aspects. That, too, I stopped playing pretty
       | quickly. I saw coworkers who would play it all the time in the
       | background, and that kind of put me off. Almost philosophically.
       | 
       | Balatro has more "game" than Cookie Clicker, but I'm still
       | slightly repelled by its relatively direct "number go up" aspect.
       | ("Repelled" is a bit of a strong and rude word, but I couldn't
       | think of anything better right now. I don't hate Balatro.)
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-21 23:00 UTC)