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.
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.
I think the term they use online is "CMX": First get CHIPs-boosting jokers, then get MULT, then get X Mult.
You also have to have good economy and take advantage of interest or some other money-generating card. It's very much a win-more game where you need to get the steamroller going. I don't think I've ever beaten the game without a good money generator, either a money-generating joker or interest.
Part of it is also just being OK with losing, if anything I think you deterministically lose more often in solitaire than in balatro.
I also see belatro similar to poker where you can take all the right actions, play to your outs, and still lose to bad variance. All you can do is your best.
Early game: Get a joker that gives you a big mult (e.g., Half Joker w/ +20 Mult for small hands). This will allow you to survive while you build out your points engine. (You can survive with flushes in the early game, but it can get harder to win with flush later, due to Bosses, unless you have flush friendly Jokers and a large hand size.)
Mid game: Generate $$$ so you can buy planets and tarot cards. Once you're happy with your jokers, you want to level up the hands that work well with those Jokers. Try easier hands like Two Pair or Pair or High Card. (Assuming you can generate enough cash to level up those hands.)
Tip: Blue Seals are helpful!
To Win: Look for jokers that get you increasingly higher +mult or xmult for things you'll do anyways. There are jokers that increase mult for using tarot cards, or jokers that increase xmult for adding new cards to your deck.
Tip: Steel cards are also awesome.
Tip: If you have an xmult joker, move it to the right side, as jokers trigger from left to right. You want to multiply after you add!
Disclaimer: I have not beaten ante 11 yet. I can get a couple million points with my strategy, but 7+ million is too difficult. I don't see an easy path to naneinf (not a typo). I guess I'll need to give up and watch some YouTube guides as some point.
I feel like I win about 50% or more of my games on regular white stake difficulty. I've won some red stakes, but I don't really feel a need to make the game much harder. I think if I played it safe I could win 75% or more of my games on white stake. The reason my win rate on base difficulty is lower is because I like to try weird strategies with different jokers.
The amazing thing about Balatro is.... there are many many different paths to a victory. Everyone has their own favorite joker, and it might all be different.
For a long time, I liked two pair hands the most. Now most of my games use pair or high card. I find it too difficult to get to ante 9+ with a 5-card strategy. (4-card flushes are OK.)
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.
It's like praising Coca-Cola for not tasting as sweet as Pepsi
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.
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.
Monetization doesn't really affect addiction, which was the question at hand.
Perhaps it was too overt?
I think there is a fine line here between the cynicist 'never indulge' and the consoomer/accelerationist 'do as you will'
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.
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...
Well, it was designed for the terminal, try the webconsole version here: https://rpigab.gitlab.io/solitaire-cli/
I may have found a fix. I previously applied CSS `overscroll-behavior: contain` on <body>, it seems it also needs to be set on <html> (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/overscroll-... and https://stackoverflow.com/a/60565197).
I pushed that (supposed) fix, please let me know if that solves the issue for you (you may need to “refresh” by launching-quitting-relaunching the app.)
If not, please tell me what Android version and browser you are using, so that I can investigate more.
For what it's worth, I was willing to contribute before the end of the first game. If that illustrates anything to you it's that you've got a winner on your hands :)
Edit: screenshot: https://ibb.co/4RkTFzZ4
The X to close the ad didn’t work.
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.
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:
My partner used to relax with Flipflop Solitaire[1], which lets you choose how many suits there are in the deck. These days they play lots of Balatro with the checkered deck[2].
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.
But my favorite favorite remains the old Windows 95 Solitaire. I keep a copy around even on Linux through wine to play sometimes on PC. The main reason? I still love the ending animation of all the cards springing down without clearing the background. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uev21NTzom8 I don't understand why no other version seems to want to implement this ending animation, it's the best one of all time.
It did have the benefit of me deciding I'll never purchase another Windows computer ever again and my family just doing physical card games.
Other features include history of all your plays, statistics, and ability to play older hands again.
Another detail that might be relevant to HN audience is that it is built using 100% SwiftUI.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-solitaire-app/id1613070030...
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.
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.
Here's one written in C# and compiled to WebAssembly:
Source code:
It's not overly configurable, but there are zero ads, trackers etc. and it's very lightweight with hopefully no (significant) bugs.
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.
More than Universal Paperclips?
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.
(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.)
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.
I'm playing on mobile so no Steam mods, but I do hope the developer will add additional game modes, cards, modifiers, etc to change things up a bit. Or I should just get out of my comfort zone and take a chance lol.
It's somewhat unique among the roguelites I've seen in not only offering this but also treating it as valid play: any wins/achievements in this mode (e.g. more BC) will unlock properly.
So, no need to put up with Spartan Sandals ever again!
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.
The upside of putting in the time is that when you get good, it feels fantastic.
If you haven't tried it, I'd recommend Dead Cells. Yes, it's twitchy action, but it's easier than Gungeon to get good at, and the parkour-like flow looks and feels wonderful from quite early on. TBH it's a better game than Gungeon in most respects.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apparently there are places where the code is like a thousand lines of if card_name then effect.
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.
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>.
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, Löve .
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.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.
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.
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)
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.
https://evmar.github.io/retrowin32/run.html?exe=sol.exe&dir=...
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.
Anyways, love Balatro!
This is in stark contrast with Slay the Spire, which I've been playing compulsively since 2019.
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.
My only complaint is the bidding systems and how difficult it is to learn even as a person who loves to play cards. Like, knowing how to play spades sorta gets you there. But the bidding system takes it a thousand steps further.
We always had fun because we learned together, got the basics down for normal hands, and anytime someone was in a slam situation, we'd basically "open bid" and ask for advice amongst everyone.
Sure, it's not tournament-style, but it's fun.
Whist is basically no-bid bridge, which can be fun, too.
I'm something of a Solitaire addict. In addition to Belatro, the Microsoft Solitaire Collection is the only game on my iPhone, and I happily pay Microsoft $10 a year because the design is the most comfortable for me. Klondike soothes me like nothing else, but it's nice to be able to put a little variety in the game for me with FreeCell, Pyramid or TriPeaks (I'm not a Spider fan).
> 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)
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.
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.
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.org/wiki/Microsoft_Solitaire_Collection...
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.
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.