GameMakersToolkit
patreon
GMTK Mini - Balatro's 'Cursed' Design Problem
🕑 Added 2024-04-02 18:06:18 +0000 UTCHey Patrons!
I'm having a nice relaxing break from game dev, and so I wanted to make a quick video to unpick one of the curious bits of design in Balatro. It's about information, player psychology, and listening to your audience. Hope you dig it!
Mark
Comments
Fran
One solution could be to add a deck that shows the score and has -1 discard and -1 hand
Mary Rose Cook
Super interesting video - thanks! You touched on how the game developer doesn't want to change the game design because they made the game to suit their own tastes. That makes sense and is of course fine. But did you have any thoughts on more fundamental design changes that could solve the problem (as opposed to adding a preference)?
Turner Monroe
This makes a lot of sense and is presented well, the one thing I will say is that sometimes the best game design is one that changes and adapts to players in the real world. Take Binding of Isaac, people tend to say that he made the right or wrong decision by not including item descriptions, but perhaps the best design was to not include item descriptions until they had been well documented by the community, and then include it as an option for players that wanted it in a patch or DLC. I do think for Balatro it makes sense as a late game upgrade, or a new game plus reward, or something like that. That way once you play the game enough, the score indicator will either improve your performance or eliminate the tedium of looking up the numbers, which seems like a fun reward both groups.
Marcus Trapp
It's an interesting issue, great video as always, Mark. Even though McMillian eventually reversed his course on item descriptions, I'm with the creator's original intent in both cases. I've sunk a fair amount of time into both games, but I'm pretty breezy about my video game playing, generally not using any mods or wikis. I have gotten the benefit of the obfusticated mysteries intended. I guess those people who are always min/maxing will always find some way to derive hidden information, be it calculators, wikis, brute force, or data mining. That doesn't sound fun to me, but that is a choice they're making.
Mr Jim Le Fevre
Great vid, thank you Mark
Ryder
Man... I do not like seeing clowns so prominently on my feed and email.
Nick Vance
I've been playing but also frustrated by Balatro. I'm a Slay the Spire Ascension 20 player, so I want all the information which Balatro makes you calculate. After reading the AMA where the creator said he's not going to add a score preview, I decided the hassle of running my own calculations was not fun and I quit Balatro. I hope the decision of including a score preview is revisited someday so I could enjoy Balatro again.
