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UNDER CONSTRUCTION: blog post #2: hot damn balatro is inspiring \\ the twenty-fifth day of september, twentytwentythree. my birthday is tomorrow

shoutout to pinch, q1, brin, daniel, ezra, and namida sai for all expressing interest in reading this blog post!
if you're reading this line, then i haven't removed it yet, which means blog post #2 isn't finished yet!!!!!!!!!

wahhou!!!! it is time, friends. for anotheur blogge po'st. today we will be talking about balatro, a videogame by (first-time??) videogame developer localthunk. there is a demo available now, which you can play if you'd like!

this is the second demo (in my experience) that has existed for this game. the prior demo was limited to 50 rounds. i am ashamed and unashamed to admit that i played all 50 rounds, spent several hours trying to figure out how the 50 round limit was being enforced in attempt to circumvent it, emerged defeated by the complexities of Steam Demo Round Limit Enforcement, created a new steam account with a new email on a laptop that had been sitting unused in the storage compartment inside our couch for about a year just for the ability to play 50 more rounds, had my significant other download steam and then balatro on THEIR laptop in a manic attempt to share the joy this videogame demo caused to blossom within me, vibrated in withdrawal when game developer localthunk removed the demo from steam, and finally gazed disdainfully upon the ravenous hordes of gamers in the balatro discord server salivating at the mouth for More Demo Rounds Please (whilst suppressing the weak echoes of similar feelings within myself. begone demon. i will not clatter downward from grace into the writhing gamer masses).

this demo, however, can be played as much as you'd like :- ) it will not subsume you i promise*. instead of being a [round-limited sneek peak at the game as it existed in its entirety] like last demo, this new demo is a focused and narrow slice of what will eventually be the final game: like a tiny sliver of cake when you want to participate in dessert for purely social reasons.



but!! let's move the heck on! let's answer some questions! like why is this gamecake tasty enough to warrant a blog post? the people want to know.

juice

• THE MUSIC \\ "LouisFsountrack on Instagram made the base version of the song split into 12 or so tracks, then I remixed them all into 5 different songs that blend into each other while you move from area to area within the game (the shop, the planetarium, a boss, etc)" --localthunk, balatro discord. \\ the music in this videogame is very good. because it's split into multiple tracks, instruments and effects are added/removed dynamically based on what's happening in the game. the music is ever-grooving and there are no disruptions. it flows into different configurations to fit the mood much the same way that water changes shape to conform to the container that holds it (source: elementary school science class)
• THE BACKGROUND \\ much like the music, the background changes based on context and there are no abrupt changes: it smootly transitions as needed during the different phases of the game. the background is a funky little swirl. sometimes it's monochromatic and low-contrast, sometimes it's bicolor and high-contrast. it truly does it all. "It's a Mandelbrot type shader that mixes a few colours in real time, then pixelates the output" --localthunk, balatro discord.
• THE FLAVOUR \\ the human body has multiple systems, like the muscular system, skeletal system, and skin system. in videogames, the gameyness is the skeleton and meat systems, and things like [artwork, music, and descriptive text] is the skin system. when the skin, muscles, and skeleton are all harmonious, this is called "flavor". like when you have fried chicken, the skin is so good. we call that flavorful as well.
  vegetarians: when you don't remove the skin from small bodylike groceries like apples, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes, you get extra vitamins and minerals for your own body. you might not call this flavor, but we will be doing so here. the videogame balatro is like the human body, fried chicken, and a carrot all at the same time. take a look at this powerup card from the game:

a brand new entry from the "x plus y" school of design

blog post #1: a little history about the mobile game merge genre \\ the twenty-first day of august, twentytwentytwo

shoutout 2 comfie. the whole internet loves u :- ) avoid milkshakes

there is a whole genre of games where you click and drag a little leaf on top of another little leaf to make a Bigger leaf.
two Bigger leafs make a BIGGEST leaf.
two biggest leafs make a whole dang tree!
a whole dang tree is therefore equivalent to eight little leafs.
merging two whole dang trees and continuing onward will require [format key: "(number of little leafs)|(amount of board tiles)"]:
16|5, 32|6, 64|7, 128|8, 256|9, etc.
this is obviously not a sustainable practice. where the hell are you getting all those littel leafs? you monster?? deforestation is the only answer. these leafs were Not sustainably harvested.


okay so you get it. this is the merge genre. but it also has some cousins you should learn about!
combinatorics is a field of mathematics used primarily by time travelers that deals with graphing out the totality of branching paths within a finite system.
we will not be diving deep into all of that business Today, but i have gifted you with a fun little search term should you choose to embark on your Own Journey.
because we love videogames, here are some videogames:



shoutout to deviant art user "DarkDiddyKong" for creating that second image.

in kirby 64: the crystal shards (2000) you play as kirby, an orb.
you can vore small creatures to gain their Vital Essence.
you can combine any two Vital Essi to become the wielder of an Advanced Essence.
Advanced essences cannot be combined.
there are 7 basic powers, which means that there are 7*7==Fourty-Nine Advanced Essences for you to learn about and try.
when i played this game for the first time at a friend's house for the first time i immediately transcended this mortal plane
it was so fucking cool i love combining shit like wtff? hellou?? this fickigmnng ROCKS DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Is When I Learned That Combining Things, Is Cool, Actually, And I Wanted 2 Do More of It...

here is another videogame.

shoutout 2 ign forums user "BlackM.1" for creating the list in 2006.

lost magic for the nintendo dee ess (2006) is a videogame where you obtain pokemon but also cast fireballs at your opponents, unless they're the fire wizard in which case you begrudingly use your flimsy ice capabilities.
there are six elements: fire, water, wind, earth, light, and dark.
your dad was the Bigg Boss of Light Magic but he got incredibly murdered so that's you now.
of those six elements, each has 3 different basic spells of increasing complexity. (light:: level1: "heal light" level2: "light armour" lebvel3: "restore")
when you cast a spell, you can combine up to 3 spells to create a cooler bigger spell.
that means there are a lot of spells in this videogame. if we assume all combos are valid, then there's 18*18*18==Five-Thoudand Eight-Hundred and Thirty-Two speels in this game,
but that is not true.
there are 396 spells in this game.
396/18(the number of individual basic spells)==twenty-two,
so i think it's safe to assume you can't cast a spell that uses both dark+light, fire+ice, or wind+earth for Opposites Can't Mix reasons.
i think there may be some other constraints as well because 18*15*12 =/= 396, but this is not what's important.

what's important is that combining things is fun.
between these two games, it's easy to become a combining enthusiast...
...i know i did 😏

here! is yet another videogame. this one is called "doogle god"


in Doodle God (2010) you start off with like, idk. 8 basic elements. and you can combine them. we love combining:- )
but! not all combinations are valid. iirc it's even possible to get an invalid merge with a nonzero amount of basic element + basic element combinations
and! anything that you have successfully combined adds a new element to your list that you can then attempt to combine with literally anything and everything in your element inventory.
the result of this is that the possibility space balloons ridiculously, and so too does the amount of invalid combinations.
it feels discouraging to fail many times in a row, which is inevitable.
the amount of options are overwhelming.
there are two paths from here: [systematically attempt to combine everything with everything else] and [actually think about which things would go together in an attempt to intuit the game maker's opinions].
both of these options suck.
if you're systematically combining everything you are now a robot. write a script to play this game for you, it is not worth your time.
if you're thinking and making educated guesses, then the game feels like an old point&click adventure game puzzle: arbitrary and annoying.

doodle god is the first game that taught me that combining things doesn't always rock incredibly.

if you read the doodle god wiki screenshot, you may have noticed reference to Alchemy (1997).

i don't have much to say. i played this one for the first time today and you can too if you perform a search engine search for "DOS game Alchemy from 1997"

next up we have this concept hitting the phone games sphere. i have played a multitude of these, but Merge Dragons (2016/17) and Merge Mayor (2021) are the only ones i have anything nice to say about.
there's also Triple Town (2012) and Puzzle Forge II (2015), both of which kick incredible ass, which i forgot about including in the blog post until literally Just Now, and therefore i will not talk about them,



as you can see, there a lot of phone games that can have their roots traced to one of the games i have already talked about above. there's a lot of them.
merge dragons was the first one i ever saw that had the "levels + home base" and also the "merge 3 OR merge more efficiently with a merge 5" thing going on. i would credit merge dragons with starting this trend.
merge mayor is simply good. it is not bad and it is not fantastic, and i would have made it differently, but it exists and i spent several months enjoying the consistent brain chemistry it would give me when i did my daily login and performed by silly tasks. i think it helped me through some post-2020 mental health voidzone.

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSIUON 2: THE AWARD-WINNING SEQUEL TO CONCLUSION 1