Balatro! It’s the hot new indie darling. It shifted a million copies in a month, it’s
been streamed by pretty much everyone on Twitch, and it’s one of the top rated games of 2024
so far. I’ve also played it… quite a bit. But, this game has - and this is according
to its own designer - a “fundamental design flaw”. A “cursed problem” that the designer has
been unable to solve. Let me explain. First - if you somehow haven’t played Balatro,
it’s a card game about trying to find poker hands in order
to score points. Better hands score bigger points. But on top of that, you can do all sorts of
wily tricks to boost your score. Special cards rack up more points. Crazy joker cards change the rules of the
game. And you can stack your deck - or toss away
cards - to make certain hands more happenable. It’s a really fun game - a sublime, synergistic
slot-machine that feels fun to play, and is even more fun to break. It’s also really elegantly designed - with
its clean UI, straightforward concept, a
nd, well, just how much depth has been squeezed
out of a few key systems. But there’s one… interesting design choice
in there. And it’s this: the game doesn’t tell you
how many points you’re going to score, before you play your hand. You simply pick your cards, cross your fingers,
and hit go. Now this would be really quite helpful information. It could tell you to play one hand over another. It could tell you if you’re about to scrape
past the ante, or miss it by a few points. It could tell you
if you’re about to win
the entire game - or lose the whole thing and have to start from scratch. And yet… Balatro doesn’t give you a, let’s call
it - a score preview. Of course, this was an entirely intentional
design choice. LocalThunk - the game’s anonymous Canadian
designer - has explained that, for him, the joy of Balatro lives in that precise moment
I just described. When you cross your fingers and hit play. When you’ve set up your point-scoring engine
and hope that it will bring home the b
acon. LocalThunk says “my personal belief is that
the game is more fun when you set up your Rube Goldberg machine and watch it go before
knowing whether or not the hand will win the round.” And Balatro totally plays into this! There’s so much hype and pageantry after
playing your hand. The numbers tick up, with escalating sound
effects. Each card and joker steps forward in turn
to add their points to the total. If you’re lucky, the score multiplier will
set on fire and start to burn hotter and h
otter with each multiplication. And so if you already knew how many points
you were going to get. If a bit of UI had pre-calculated the score
and told you that you were going to win the ante with this hand… well none of that would matter. In fact, it would just get in the way. This is not the only reason to forgo a score
preview, mind. It would also add cruft to the UI - especially
when you need to account for cards that have random properties. How do you elegantly show a range of possible
score
s? It would slow the game down, incentivising
players to check every possible hand to find the highest-scoring combination. And it would change the entire feel - from
a chill game about vibing with cards, to a stern spreadsheet-style strategy game. And so this is a totally legit game design
decision, right? Every game designer has to choose how much
information to give to the player. Like, should you show a boss’s health bar,
or keep it hidden? Should enemies come up with their strategies
in sec
ret, or should their intent be explained to the player? As I’ve explored in various other videos,
how much information a player has will change their behaviour, and change the way the game
feels. And so Balatro hides its score preview to
make players act more quickly - and to create a feeling of suspense and drama whenever you
play a hand. LocalThunk had an experience in mind - and
picked mechanics that would nudge players towards that feeling. A smart design choice. However! Balatro is not like
those other games I just
showed. Because while the score preview is hidden
from the player… the information is still technically available! Because you can just… you can just calculate it yourself. So, like…. a straight is worth 30 chips
and 4 mult. These cards are going to add an extra 10,
20, 30, 39, 47 chips, and then the two face cards will add another 30 each thanks to this
joker. So that’s 137 chips times 4… 548. Not quite enough to beat the ante. But close. And so if information in a gam
e can be hidden,
or visible… Balatro’s score preview falls into a weird
half category - hidden, but attainable if you really want it. And that’s the fundamental design flaw at
the heart of Balatro. The designer wants the excitement of a slot
machine - but also the numerical predicability of an Excel spreadsheet. And so the only way to square that circle
is to hope that players won’t bother to calculate the final score. But if we go back to that timeless Soren Johnson
quote - “given the opportuni
ty, players will optimize the fun out of a game” - it
shouldn’t be surprising that a number of Balatro players are playing the game with
the calculator app open on their phone, or with a spreadsheet set up on a second monitor,
or with Steam’s in-game overlay showing a bespoke website that calculates Balatro
hands. And - actually - this is exactly why Balatro
has a deck view. During playtesting, the game did not show
you which cards were left in your deck. But - again - playtesters could technica
lly
get that information by tracking which cards had already been played. And after polling users, LocalThunk found
that many were doing just that - even though it really wasn’t much fun. So he added a powerful deck peek feature. But a score preview felt different. It felt like it encroached upon the DNA of
the game. It stepped on the stuff that made Balatro… Balatro. And so while the designer is empathetic to
people who wish to play more strategically. And is bummed out that the optimum way to
play involves busywork, and doing calculations outside of the game, he worries that adding
a score preview would spoil the fun for those who wish to play more casually. And that’s totally true! Making a game better for one group can make
it worse for another. As a designer you need to be certain who the
game is for - and then protect that player base from certain design decisions. Even if that design decision is provided merely
as an option. Speaking on the Eggplant podcast, LocalThunk
says “if
I add an option to have this score preview, people are just going to click on
it, and they're not going to experience the game that I wanted to create.” And besides - should a designer even have
to endorse an option that directly goes against their intentions for the game? LocalThunk has been clear that he made the
game for himself - and isn’t interested in changing the game for other people. Even if there are a million of them. But. Here’s the rub. It’s one thing to make a bold design choice
an
d then stand by it, for the betterment of the game. To shun the haters and stick by your design. But that doesn’t really work if there’s
a way for players to find a way around your choice - no matter how tedious that loophole
might be. And we know this! Because this is not the first time this has
happened to a game. In fact, it’s not even the first time it’s
happened to an extremely popular roguelike. Enter: The Binding of Isaac. So this basement-dwelling dungeon crawler
is packed with powerful
items and upgrades… but the game doesn’t tell you what they
do. They just have a name, or a cryptic tagline,
or maybe just three question marks. The game’s designer, Edmund McMillen, did
this on purpose to create a feeling of mystery, similar to the sensation he got when playing
games as a kid - like the original Legend of Zelda. He described that game by saying “You weren't
sure what things did until you experimented with them, and you had to brainstorm with
your friends and put all your findin
gs together in order to progress”. And so to mimic that mysterious sensation
in Isaac - the items are deliberately left unexplained. You’ll need to pick things up, try them,
and puzzle out their properties. Finding a new item should lead to curiosity,
experimentation, and surprise. And that worked… for about five seconds. And then people figured out what all the items
did and put that information up on wikis and other websites. Want to know what this weird little thing
will do? Just find it on P
latinum God and mouse over
it for a full description. So, like Balatro - McMillen chose to hide
information to create a certain feeling. But because that information is technically
attainable - this time with a Google search rather than a spreadsheet - a number of players
ended up playing the game in a completely different way than the designer intended. Arguably, a worse way. And so after multiple DLC packs which added
hundreds of new pick-ups, this has become, basically, the defacto way to pla
y The Binding
of Isaac. McMillen says “People would always say,
"You can't play Isaac without a browser open on your phone." I hated that that's how everyone played for
so long... and still play”.”. In fact, he’s described the lack of item
descriptions as the biggest flaw with Binding of Isaac. This design choice has basically haunted him
in the years since Isaac’s release. And in a post in 2023, McMillen has said that
he’s considering finally adding item descriptions into the game as an optiona
l feature. Perhaps deciding that it’s better to support
them officially, than players having a worse time with your game because of the way you
designed it. And I wonder if something similar might happen
with Balatro. Now, I don’t think the two examples are
exactly the same. I agree that Balatro is more fun to play without
score previews and I’ve never once thought to pre-calculate a score in the 30-odd hours
I’ve played the game. This issue only really affects a small portion
of the game’s most
hardcore, strategy-minded audience. But over time, as the game’s long tail stretches
out, I think this decision might come to haunt the developer, just like Isaac’s item descriptions. But, if you’re watching LocalThunk, I think
there are ways to provide this as an option to these players… without spoiling the game
for everyone else. For one, a score preview is only needed by
players who are incredibly invested in the game, so the option could be granted as a
late-game unlock - and not as someth
ing you can switch on from the word go. Kinda like how, I dunno, how Chrono Cross has
a fast-forward button, but it only unlocks after you’ve beaten the game. The option could also be clearly communicated
to the player - like how Celeste prefaces its powerful assist mode with a message that
explains who this option is for. Or how Heat Signature politely asks you to
not turn off permadeath, please, it’s there for a reason. Or Balatro could open itself up to mods - so
users can hack their own scor
e preview into the game, without the developer needing to
officially support it. This is actually what happened to Isaac - the
‘External Item Descriptions’ mod is the most popular Isaac add-on in the game’s
Steam workshop, with almost 2 million subscribers. That’s not great for console players, though. So it could instead be provided it as a cheat
code - so players have to actively seek this thing out, rather than stumble onto it as
an innocuous option in the menu. As I’ve discussed in my videos
about accessibility
- there are plenty of ways to open a game up to a wider audience, without necessarily
spoiling it for the target group of players. Whatever LocalThunk decides to do, this has
proven to be a fascinating game design case study. About how you can change how a game feels,
by changing how much information you give to the player. About how players won’t always act in the
way you want them to, especially if you leave open a loophole. And about how the best intentions in game
design
sometimes have to change, when you see how players actually interact with your
game. I’ll be curious to see what happens with
Balatro. For now - check out this video on heads up
displays, where I talk more about how information can change the way a player acts, and feels. Thanks for watching.
Comments
This is also a famous problem in board games, typically referred to as "hidden but trackable information." The classic example is Catan, where player's hands are considered secret, even though every player knows exactly what is gained by each player and what cards each player spends, so a player with a pad of paper or a good memory can remember all of it. Despite massive player push back, the designer of Catan has held firm on this rule. He said that the game just gets too slow and dull without it, as always knowing exactly what every other player has in hand means players can math out the game too precisely. Interestingly, instead of allowing players to get around this rule, it is actually enforced in competitive Catan play (and players are not allowed to use paper to track). In effect, it adds a memory or deduction element to the game. According to top Catan players, logical deduction typically gets them close enough that very few players actually bother with trying to track every card draw and discard. Just an interesting note that despite massive push back from the part of the player base that wants to "optimize" this rule away, it has remained. And that even the competitive community has ended up embracing it.
Amusingly, mods have already done what you've described: there's a mod out there that adds a bunch of new jokers, and one of them is Scouter - and all it does is show you how many points you're going to score. Making it a Joker is also really interesting because it means you're not using that Joker slot for something that actually provides a mechanical benefit, so there's an inherent trade-off to having that information available.
The thing with Binding of Isaac is, there's literally over 300 different items you can collect. And some of their effects can be pretty niche. I've been using the "item description mod" for as long as I can remember. Makes playing the game so much more fun when you can actually understand what you're getting. Maybe when BoI first came out, not having items described made sense. But now? After like 4 expansions and a ton of free updates? There's too much for any player to possibly remember. And it's just not that fun. ESPECIALLY because so many power-ups can actually be detrimental to your playthrough. I have had a few runs end because I picked up a power-up that really fucked my guy over. Imagine in Balatro if your Joker cards didn't tell you what they did until you used them. It would make the game unplayable.
Fun fact: Balatro is actually an old word for jester or joker, which was used frequently in Ancient Rome
One possible solution in a game like Binding of Isaac would be to implement an in-game knowledge database you could fill up as you learn mechanics. The game would reflect this in the HUD by only providing you the info that you've already learned.
For Isaac, I always thought the easiest thing to do was to add full item description after you tried said item at least once. That way, I feel like players would be more willing to experiment.
Of course Mark makes a video entirely based on the game he's been addicted to throughout developing his game
3:38 "Stern spreadsheet style strategy" is my new favorite vocal warmup
I love that Balatro doesn't have the score preview for all the reasons you/localthunk have stated, I think an additional advantage is that it allows you to get a different feeling/intuition about each run, instead of having to do a calculation most of the time you can draw on your past experience in the run and just make an approximation of if the hand you're about to play is good enough based on your recent history.
I think Binding of Isaac is kind of a different case. The game has like 1000 items and not knowing what they do is frustrating. Half of them have effects that you would NEVER figure out unless you looked it up, and others will instantly destroy your nice build that you spent an entire run making. The item description mod has in my opinion been the best thing to ever happen to the game.
In magic the gathering, the information in between "hidden" and "public" is "derived information". "Public information" is everything a player is required to share to his opponent about his card on demand, things like amount of cards in hand, life total and others. "Hidden" is every information unkown to one or both player, like what cards are in your hands, what is the order of cards in your library. "Derived" Is everything you can deduce from public information, if a player returns a card from play to their hand, they are in no obligation to reveal that this card is now in their hand because it's a "hidden" zone, but a skilled opponent will remember this "derived" information. I think it's a pretty good naming convention for this "in between" for information technically public but not easily available.
I'd say Balatro nailed that mechanic when it comes to my style of gameplay - I'm not crazy or sweaty enough to calculate exact score, but available info is still useful to calculate approximate result in your head. Then it's just a matter of tens of tokens, that's the uncertainty, the "slot machine" feeling. I love this game for that.
The Binding of Issac situation actually reminds me a lot about how the Risk of Rain series (1, 2 and Returns) has a similar issue, albeit to a smaller extent, where the effects of each item are described but not the exact numbers (for example, Soldier's Syringe tells you it gives attack speed but doesn't directly specify via. popup that's it's +15% per stack). Then again, Risk of Rain does have tools to see those exact numbers via. mods, wikis, and the logbook outside of active play.
I sometimes watch my friend play Isaac and up untill now I've never realised that the UI with all stats and item list and descriptions hovering on the top left weren't integral part of the game but a mod.
On the subject of issac, I think one of the biggest issues with not giving info was the fact you have a fair amount of items with tradeoffs, negative effects, and anti-synergies. So times looking stuff up felt less like "which of these options is optimal" and "will taking this item ruin my run." Ironically, Issac Pills feel like a better implementation of "hidden information" - each run they're randomized, so you can't just wiki it. (and I think once you checked a pill, you'd know what it'd do for the rest of a run)
I just got back home from a day at college and the first thing I did was open balatro and right then the notification came. I think the universe is telling me I have a problem with this game.
Ngl, i only calculate my score on the boss bind where you are allowed one hand.
I played through binding of Isaac for hours upon hours before finally caving to adding an item description mod. The reason was simply this: there was too many items for me to remember and it was a hassle to stop mid run to figure out what something did despite me using it already. That is the flaw imo in Isaac. It had become a hindrance. Balatro is different because you will already have a decent idea of your hands capabilities beforehand. You have enough accessible information from your jokers to make the right decisions. It impacts so little people in comparison to something like Issac where the vast majority faces that issue. Change Isaac’s systems to tell you descriptions after discovery still results in a vision Edmund desired, or at least 90% of the way there.
I think Isaac's "figure it out" approach worked at the start because there were less 200 of them and most of them had a a pretty immediate effect. Nowadays there's over 700 of them, and some of them have really weird effects and/or only activate under specific circumstances. Especially with trinkets, I have over 1000 hours in the game and I really just do not remember what half of them do. Without Item Descriptions, a lot of trinkets just become "thing I pick up and then replace with something that I actually know about without ever seeing their effect activate". I like the method used in The Void Rains Upon Her Heart. Item pick ups are initially kept hidden to the player, but after picking one up, you can unlock their description. Something like that in Isaac would be a nice compromise.
I think a big difference with Isaac's pickups is that pickups aren't always free. There are plenty of times in Isaac runs where I picked up a random boss drop and was excited to experiment and figure it out. However, there are just as many times when I encounter an item in a shop and have to decide whether to spend my hard-earned coins on it, which is hard to do if I can't figure out what it does. Same goes with the items you get by sacrificing your health to the devil statue. Because I tend to be conservative with my resources, my choices basically become "look it up on the wiki to see if it's worth it" or "save my money for something whose consequences I know how to predict."