A lot of things are impressive about Balatro, but possibly the thing that impresses me most is that it isn't afraid to be a game qua game. There is no player character. The numbers are not "health". You absolutely do not walk across a fantasy map battling stock rpg monsters. You are not, after each stage, treated to a voice actor reading the next three sentences of the sentimental story about grief and family or whatever the Story Department wrote while the Gameplay Department was making the gameplay. You are you, and you're trying to win a game, and you may come out of it with stories but they'll be yours and true.
A story can be integral to a game, but only if it _is_ integral to the game. The story might be very good and even have a very clever in-narrative rationalization for why it is interrupted by puzzles, but that does not necessarily integrate them. More creators should examine what it is they really want to make, and what that does and doesn't actually require.
@Cerulean Does this mean we're never gonna get a Balatro cartoon? :'(
Maybe it's time for me to write some fanfic, put it in a world where the game's got Yugi-Oh properties. "Yorick! Activate!"
Yeah, though, I really am enjoying the fact that instead of "plot" or "worldbuilding" (or a half-assed template-fantasy attempt at them), Balatro has ATMOSPHERE. I feel like there are vague hints at a malign ghost inside the machine; I'm pleased it seems disinterested in feeding us any details.
Well, it's not like Saturday Supercade needed much more to work with. But there not be enough irony nor sincerity in the world to make forgivable the adventures of Jimbo teaching kids math to save the world from the schemes of the Boss Blinds led by Violet Vessel.
Okay, might have a crack at designing Violet Vessel though.
@Cerulean Oh cripes, though, now that you mention it... I love the idea of a show that teaches kids math by presenting its own simple card game and centering the show's "action" around finding solutions to kid-level but brain-twisty puzzles...
But not only would this show have zero commercial potential in our reality, it still shouldn't be Balatro. "Ambiguously creepy alien video poker machine" is all I want and all it needs to be.
