Balatro: A Deck-Building Masterpiece in Simplicity and Strategy

If you’re a fan of deck-building games and rogue-likes, Balatro is the game you need to try. It combines the timeless structure of a poker deck with innovative deck-building mechanics, creating a game that’s as easy to pick up as it is hard to put down. I’ve been hooked since I started playing, and after a four-hour binge on a flight, I’m convinced it’s one of the best mobile games out there.

At its core, Balatro uses traditional poker hands—flushes, straights, and so on—but what truly elevates the experience is how it incorporates Jokers into the mix. Jokers are abundant in this game, and they bring a whole new dimension to the strategy. They offer creative bonuses, making every hand feel exciting, unpredictable, and rewarding.

One of the standout aspects of Balatro is how it perfectly balances the mechanics of deck-building and rogue-like gameplay. Each run feels fresh because the game constantly presses you to make tough choices: Should you skip the blinds and take a risk for bigger rewards? Or should you play conservatively to guarantee survival? The decisions you make directly affect your long-term strategy, making every run feel like a game of chance with modifiers that keep things interesting.

The bosses add another layer of challenge and fun. They’re themed well, both mechanically and aesthetically, forcing players to adapt their strategies on the fly. Sometimes, I found myself needing to rethink my entire approach to survive a boss fight, which adds to the depth of the game.

Visually, Balatro’s art style is perfect in its simplicity. It’s light, clean, and incredibly effective—exactly the kind of aesthetic that resonates with me. There’s no clutter, no unnecessary frills, just design choices that reflect the core theme of the game: risk and reward.

And the best part? It’s an offline game. I’ve always appreciated the freedom of playing without worrying about internet connections or data usage. On a recent flight from LAX to ORD, I played Balatro for hours straight after reading positive reviews on Steam and buying it impulsively on mobile. It was, hands down, the best purchase I made on that trip.

Balatro’s replayability is insanely high. Every run feels fresh, and the combination of strategy, poker hands, and rogue-like progression makes it addicting in all the right ways. Whether you’re trying to outsmart a boss, build the perfect hand, or hit your long-term goals, the game always offers something new to explore.

In short, Balatro is a must-play for anyone who loves deck-building games, rogue-likes, or even poker. The gameplay is strategic and satisfying, the art is perfectly matched to the theme, and the offline mode makes it the ideal game for on-the-go gaming. Trust me, you won’t regret picking this one up.

The Art of Assets and Game Design: Creating Lasting Memories

In the realm of game design, carefully crafting assets holds the power to forge enduring connections with players. From iconic characters to pivotal moments and invaluable items, the more intentional and thoughtful an asset is, the greater its impact on the player experience and the lasting legacy of a game. While this correlation isn’t always direct, the pressure on studios to develop highly detailed art assets, captivating storytelling, and immersive worlds is immense. However, the challenge lies in balancing sustainability and riding the waves of hype, as burnout and asset “misses” can lead to negative feedback loops that strain the relationship between developers and players.

Memorable Assets: World of Warcraft’s Success Story
World of Warcraft (WoW) stands as a testament to the power of memorable assets, as proven by the resounding success of the game’s classic relaunch. Through unforgettable bosses and items, WoW not only creates cherished memories but instills a burning desire in players to return to its vast world. This highlights the strength of well-crafted assets and their ability to leave a lasting impression.

Navigating Real-World Constraints: Asset Reskinning and Reuse
In an ideal world, unlimited funding and boundless creativity would pave the way for future content and assets. However, within the constraints of reality, such as limited time and budget, developers often turn to solutions like asset reskinning or reuse. WoW’s third expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, exemplifies this approach, with the first raid tier being a reskin of the last raiding tier from the vanilla version. By leveraging memorable enemy and item models, developers tapped into nostalgia while mitigating budget and time constraints.

The Untapped Potential: Asset Mirroring and Reversing
One promising avenue yet to be explored in World of Warcraft is the concept of mirroring assets. Racing games commonly employ this technique to add difficulty by reversing or mirroring tracks. It offers an elegant design solution because, although racing tracks are relatively straightforward to plan, populating them with meaningful assets and narratives presents a significant challenge. By sending players in the opposite direction or through mirrored tracks, developers can provide a slightly new experience without the need for creating entirely new assets. Adding reskins or palette swaps can introduce variations, gradually transforming the experience into an entirely different map. Embracing systemic methodologies like asset recycling allows studios to explore multiple avenues for implementing new content.

Enriching Old Assets: The Potential of Design Details
Blizzard took a similar approach to asset recycling with itemization, using common models with reskins between expansions. However, there are further opportunities, such as mirroring and theming Naxxramas differently. By carefully ideating and testing, developers can implement small design and story details to breathe new life into existing assets. For example, reversing the order of wings or incorporating unique interactions and environments like swimming through sewers can create a fresh and captivating experience.

The Cataclysmic Shift: Rethinking Old World Zones
Blizzard’s revamp of old world zones in Cataclysm, though initially met with mixed reactions, was a necessary response to the game’s evolving world. As WoW expanded from Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdom to Outlands and Northrend, revisiting the old world and utilizing asset recycling became crucial for budget and time constraints while still meeting fan expectations. With Classic Era WoW now a permanent option, these changes are likely to be received with more welcome, as players may appreciate the originals while embracing the essential and remarkable nature of remixes.

Carefully and masterfully creating assets in game design leads to enduring memories for players. Whether through iconic characters, moments, or items, deliberate and well-thought-out assets have a profound impact on the player experience and the lasting legacy of a game. While time and budget constraints pose challenges, embracing techniques like asset reskinning, reuse, and mirroring can open doors to new content possibilities. By carefully considering design details and leveraging existing assets, developers can create fresh experiences that captivate players and add depth to beloved games.

WoW Token

The gaming industry has undergone significant changes, with the introduction of real-money trade being a notable development. The World of Warcraft Token (WoW Token) exemplifies this trend, igniting controversy and debate. While opinions on real-money trade may vary, it is important to view its implementation as a deliberate feature rather than a flaw.

Real-money trade disrupts the traditional notion of equality in gaming, where players escape real-world inequalities and uphold an unspoken agreement on merit. Critics argue that transferring real-world wealth into the gaming environment challenges the level playing field cherished by gamers. The impact of real-money trade warrants critical examination, raising questions about the value of skill and dedication when financial investments offer shortcuts to success.

Moreover, real-money trade can commodify in-game progress and achievements, potentially undermining the inclusivity and accessibility of gaming. Concerns arise about success being determined by financial resources rather than individual skill and dedication, placing players at a disadvantage if they choose not to engage in real-money trade.

Despite ongoing debates about its merits, real-money trade offers convenience and flexibility to players with limited time but ample financial resources. It caters to the demands of a fast-paced world where time constraints are prevalent. Additionally, as the gaming community matures, real-money trade acknowledges the needs of adults with disposable income but limited time for lengthy gameplay sessions. It allows them to participate and compete at their desired power level.

In addition to the convenience and flexibility offered by real-money trade, it is important to consider what can be acquired with in-game gold. Players have the opportunity to make various quality-of-life improvements, such as purchasing epic mounts, larger bags and banks, and items available on the auction house. However, a particular source of animosity arises from GDKP raids, where players bring large amounts of gold into a raid and are carried by more skilled players, accumulating raid gear through gold transactions.

While some argue that this diminishes the direct correlation between a player’s gearscore and their skill, it is not a simple equation where gold alone can overcome a lack of skill. Effortlessly climbing the progression ladder in World of Warcraft solely through gold is not feasible for the average player. Social dynamics, a baseline expectation of performance, and connections play crucial roles. While the raw amount of gold possessed can differentiate the most extreme buyers, this narrow scope of obtaining hard mode loot represents only a minority of the player base.

It is true that the gaming landscape has changed, and skill is no longer the sole determining factor at the pinnacle of progression. However, it is essential to recognize that gold is not the sole factor shaping a player’s agency and power in the game. Other factors, in addition to gold, contribute to the modern player’s effectiveness. While gold holds significant influence in extreme cases, it is important to consider the broader context and understand that it is not the sole determinant of success or skill.

The introduction of the WoW Token and real-money trade has sparked a divisive and contentious debate within the gaming community. There is no definitive answer to this complex issue, as different perspectives exist. Navigating the challenges posed by real-money trade requires ongoing dialogue, respectful consideration of differing viewpoints, and a willingness to explore alternative solutions. Recognizing the divisive nature of the topic and the absence of a one-size-fits-all solution is crucial in addressing the complexities of real-money trade in the gaming industry.

Unique ID Gaming

Pokemon Originally Had 65,535 Versions

The idea of unique adventures in gaming is an age old one. From choose your own adventure books to text scrollers on word processors to collecting cards to opening rare loot boxes, there’s always been some form of custom experience for the user. Beyond personalization and frills, it becomes harder and harder to create large scoped games with multiple paths and endings.

From a mathematical standpoint, within four splits we’ve created 30 different outcomes, causing a huge spike in production or asset cost and design. This is unsustainable in the long run, creating possibilities of meaningless outcomes, random outcomes, or simply taxing the production team too high.

Designers can create the illusion of choice by offering a limited variety of choices only to return the user to a single track experience overall. The epitome of this was Mass Effect with its infamous colored ending, leaving fans extremely disappointed after a long journey, in turn causing the studio to respond creatively.

Going back to the Did You Know Video about Pokémon, the designers intended there to be thousands of unique versions of the game, all based on the player’s trainer ID. As mentioned before, scaling this size of a project requires a lot of scope management. The video goes over procedurally generated maps, which is one process of massive diversity. When needing to create thousands of variations, simply make variations smaller and easier to produce. Make variations minimal, yet have tangible impacts to the experience. While Pokémon did not pull this off due to scope and timing, we have developed technologies over the years that makes this process easier than ever.

Enter the blockchain. This technology is very similar to Pokémon’s trainer ID system. Everything can be catalogued and every receipt is permanent and accurate. This allows for verifiably unique experiences no matter how large the scope of the project becomes. Unfortunately that’s really as far as blockchain and video game technology have merged. There are numerous crypto projects that have Pokémon style qualities, from battling to breeding to trading and selling. but their scope of gameplay remains limited. That is not to blame crypto game developers, as having a visual be unique and having gaming content be unique are totally different things, as mentioned above with cosmetics, personalization, and frills. Typically, crypto games that pride themselves on their scope shy away from bragging about their game design.

I’ve brainstormed a few ideas on how to create completely unique gaming experiences that scale upwards correctly. Games like Role Playing Games or Trading Card Games lend themselves to being better blockchain games, but face serious scaling problems nonetheless. Without incredible designer foresight or intervention, completely unique and random mechanics can scale in extremely non-intuitive and unexpected ways, leading to dissatisfying gameplay. There are hundreds of versions of the Branch and Bottleneck problem and there are hundreds of versions of cosmetics that provide the illusion of choice. In a future post, I’ll breakdown foresight design and tools inherent to blockchain that may help overcome the original trainer ID problem.

Player Made Content: Examples

Aeon of Strife was a custom game from StarCraft which many cite as the first predecessor for a now famous genre of games: MOBAs. It was released the same year as StarCraft Brood War, 1998.

World famous, DOTA 2 has the largest international championship prize pool of any gaming series. Its rival, League of Legends, was at one point the most popular game in the world. The fundamental core of five versus five gameplay remains the same across several new titles spawning in this genre. Surprisingly, Blizzard, the company which created the games and custom tools available to create Aeon of Strife and Defense of the Ancients, remains outside of the MOBA market despite attempts like Heroes of the Storm.

Counter Strike is a custom game modified from Half-Life, widely considered one of the best competitive first person shooters series of all time. Counter Strike 1.6 was first released in 2000, 2 years after Half-Life.

The Team Fortress series started out as a mod of Quake. It popularized a class based system in shooters and was the only popular game of its genre for nearly 20 years.

Holding the record for the most ambitious esports league of all time, Overwatch changed the face of shooters. With franchising fees of upwards of $7.5M, the broadcasting and sponsorship rights overshadowed even the enormous million dollar plus prize pools. While reception of the Overwatch League was mixed, the breakthroughs in viewership and sponsorships were history defining. Hero shooters would become increasingly popular, with additions like Apex Legends and Valorant.

Released in the first month of 2019, AutoChess came seemingly out of nowhere to capture a huge audience overnight and spawn a new genre of gaming. AutoChess seemed to capture chess, mahjong, dota, tower defense, and king of the hill gameplay designs all in one game. Created by Drodo Studios, the same custom game creator of Gem TD in Warcraft III, AutoChess would become completely overshadowed within its genre by its competitors.

Within months, Valve had created a short-lived competitor named Dota Underlords and Riot had created Teamfight Tactics. Even Hearthstone, a collectible card game by Blizzard, created a custom mode to replicate the themes of an auto battler.

Day Z was a mod for Arma 2, released in 2012. Custom servers for Minecraft supporting Hunger Games began springing up around this time as a result of the pop culture film of the same name. The Battle Royale genre was born. Games like H1Z1 rose in popularity, even hosting leagues of its own, before becoming entirely overshadowed by games like PUBG or Fortnite.

The popularity of Fortnite cannot be understated. Becoming immensely popular with kids and teenagers alike, Fortnite capitalized on not only the popularity and rise in shooters, but also the popularity of games like Minecraft or Roblox which rewarded creativity and building. The trending popularity of the game was best captured by a developer supported custom event with Travis Scott, the same year he had a slew of deals with McDonalds, Sonny, and Tesla.

These examples illustrate games embraced by their community or developers. Player made content is crowd sourced content, which will always have more creativity and range, given time and passion. With each new experimentation of games comes the possibility of a new genre of gaming, from MOBAs, to Hero Shooters, to Auto Battlers, to Battle Royales, and more. In a future post, I’ll cover different developer attitudes towards player content, as well as why new genres of gaming become popular when they do in accordance to game history.

I Came, I Saw, I Returned

Not every franchise successfully pulls this off, but when a remaster or a revisit of a game does well, fans and investors alike rejoice. There’s numerous reasons why coming back to a game could be a massive failure. It could be the wrong time, as the genre of the game is no longer popular or is being overshadowed by newer and more popular games. It could be a big miss with the fans, with developers being unable to appease or please the fandom while working under constraints of investors or backers. It could be just a money grab, with very little thought placed into visiting a beloved game.

While it’s easy to criticize and point in hindsight to why projects failed, I’d like to do a justice, an obvious one, to why revisits are so celebrated.

Hitmonchan, an innocuous Pokemon card which was the cornerstone to the first Pokemon card game metagame. As an adult, it’s obvious why this card is so powerful and how it was able to define metas. As a child, I could only see it as a boring Pokemon card with boring flavor. It wasn’t until I was losing to this card and a combination of other basic Pokemon cards did my perception shift. Imagine preteen me, visiting a local Toys R Us, to be destroyed by teenagers who studied card lists and had disposable income.

Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, legendary item crafted in Vanilla World of Warcraft. During its initial release, a lot of mystery surrounded the item, with very few players completing the epic quest involved with crafting the item. As an RPG item, it held the best three qualities an item could posses: it was incredibly unique and rare, it was the most powerful weapon of its kind, and it was aesthetically unique and beautiful. Because it was so rare and it required a 40 player group for just a chance at starting the quest, politics, drama, and luck would all play against anyone’s dreams of obtaining this sword.

Final Fantasy VII, initially released in 1997, was the first 3D Final Fantasy in the series and widely celebrated as one of the best in the series. Fans cite the characters, gameplay, story, and music as genre defining, changing player’s expectations permanently. For many players, this was their first Japanese RPG or first AAA title on their Playstation, while those who did not have a Playstation or did not play RPGs missed out on this title and master piece entirely.

While technically not a revisit, Nintendo is famous for reusing signature characters and has been recently embracing cross-platform interactions with other staple franchises. Connecting with characters over the years through their personality, their gameplay, and their stories is what allows Nintendo and these franchises to continue reusing the same characters in the same stories without them feeling stale. Iconic characters in iconic settings played in predictable ways is what our brain is seeking from stories and games.

Classic games of past do not need remasters or revisits since their base technology never changes, unlike video games. As our hardware changes and updates, our general population expectations may exceed what games of past could handle. Players revisit old games to remaster old metagames and champion strategies, to accomplish goals that were once thought impossible, to experience games and stories they once missed, and to continue living out stories and gameplays of their favorite characters.

Modern games using technology will always face a question of when or should it get remastered. Today, there are two popular systems. One is an everlasting game, with seasonal passes or DLC to continue updating content and inspiring longevity. The other is yearly released updates to the game, changing one variable at a time to placate and innovate. And while there are a dozens of reasons as to why a game could fail when rebooting it, it’s important to focus on the few key ingredients on what makes a game so good that it not only stands the test of time, but it demands a fresh spotlight on it.

Vertical and Horizontal Design: WoW

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Northrend, playing the latest expansion of World of Warcraft. Wrath of the Lich King has been a new experience for me, since I missed out on it during my college years. Instead I was focused on Super Smash Bros. Melee. After spending thousands of hours in WoW since Classic’s revisit, I still so much of World of Warcraft to explore.

Vertical design, similar to telescoping, gives players the ability to look forward or ahead in their gameplay and find a path of continued enjoyment. As a real life analogue, players always desire more. When games give clear objectives and vertical paths towards achieving them, players quickly game the system to find the rewards as quickly and as easily as possible. This is incredibly apparent with the Classic revisits of World of Warcraft. Since the content has been fully explored, the mystery of the game is lost upon the majority of the player base. The joy is not in the mystery, it is instead the process of climbing up ladders of design to experience accomplishment and to reach the next challenge.

World of Warcraft has faced a complex relationship balancing the difficulty of the game for newcomers and casual gamers against the hardcore players and streamers who make up the face of the game. For many players, the revisited designs of WoW are more approachable in that the vertical steps of game design are so well documented and understood that there is no mystery whether a player is making progress or what there is to do next, and those goals are more achievable than ever.

When players finish vertical paths or disengage with them, horizontal or exploratory design reigns in. A physical symptom of a player disengaging with vertical design and horizontal design is that a player no longer plays aka raid logging. Until there is new content, vertical or horizontal, a player who has disengaged with both designs no longer engages with the game. There are rare exceptions, like social constructs and community building. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. This is the importance of horizontal design. Because vertical design and branching paths will always take immense production power, horizontal design offloads the pressure for game designers to deliver the next shiny stepping stone. Because gamers are chasing a metaphorical dragon, the arms race between designers and gamers pressures designers into prioritizing external metrics. To avoid this, exploration and horizontal design allows breathing room and life for the game and game designers, which in turn benefits the player.

Is horizontal design simply placing a second vertical design alongside? Yes and no. Wrath of the Lich King introduces dual specialization, allowing players to quickly switch playstyles in raid. Having players experience multiple roles, gaining gear and experience in these roles, and identifying their character in multiple ways is how one simple change broadens the role playing game experience. While players previously had the ability to switch between specialization at a cost, it could only be done in cities which limited the role play. In previous expansions, I myself rarely explored talent switching despite being able to afford the cost. Perhaps due to interface friction or a weak desire to explore, I simply did not enjoy multiple specializations in previous expansions of WoW. To play a different role, I played a different character.

Joyous Journeys is an experience buff which started yesterday and lasts throughout the holidays, to encourage players to return to the game and to level up additional characters. With the introduction of heirlooms, gear which end game characters can mail to their starting alternate characters, WoW introduces a bridge between two vertical designs. Other introductions include allowing reputation rewards to be passed from within the account, freeing players from grinding reputation on multiple characters, a challenge in previous expansions.

Limitations such as characters only being allowed two professions at a time cause profession based players to play more characters. More and more designs have been introduced which let professions interact with each other, which encourages players to explore a separate vertical design, one after another.

Symbiotic and bridging mechanics between vertical and horizontal systems encourages players to stay beyond the minimum play time required. The combination of design is a cornerstone of World of Warcraft and why it is so addicting by nature. While some players remain vigilant on one vertical design with end goals such as parsing or speed running, a majority of players stick around Azeroth to explore and enjoy both the vertical and horizontal designs.

City Building with Greek Gods

Zeus: Master of Olympus is a city building game developed by Impressions Games in 2000. The expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis was released in 2001, following and building upon the core elements of Zeus. I fondly remember this game as a preteen, with distinct memories of playing this while overseas in China. What is a young boy to do in a foreign country aside from play a ton of video games? I recently found these two games on Steam for $5 and immediately downloaded them.

The 1st campaign, Birth of Atlantis, has open terrain to let players freely build.
Aphrodite’s red particle glow is a lot smoother with the widescreen mod.

The game has aged well. It is still the city building game I remember. The art style still holds up today, especially with a custom wide screen mod I downloaded and installed in a few minutes after following a youtube video. The wide screen support also updates the monsters and heroes to have less laggy particle effects, making the game operate smoothly 20 years later.

I did not play Caesar or Pharaoh, but I’ve seen and read of their similarities. These games simplify and abstract the elements of city building and house them in a flavored package with campaigns, scenarios, and challenges. I was never a fan of earthquakes or tornadoes randomly running through my Sim City. Despite that, the random but limited damage gods do in Zeus and the controlled challenge of monsters does not bother me. Those challenges ranged from mild nuisances to flavored obstacles. There is a military and combat aspect, as well, with options to create defensive military structures such as walls or towers, or to bribe your way out of invasions if your economy can handle it.

Argos – a map from the community forums displaying huge city blocks.
The creator even included blueprint layouts for others to copy.

To my surprise, there is still a community of players playing Zeus to this day, uploading as recent as a week before this post. Players upload their cities to show off their housing blocks, a term used to refer to a closed loop of residential housing with all of its needs built in. Designing and supporting large housing blocks is a good chunk of the fun in Zeus, as other elements like traffic or ordinances that appear in other city building games have been abstracted out of Zeus. Instead, there is a large focus on making the residents of the city happy and fulfilled through the basic needs of food and water, to the advanced needs such as fleece, olive oil, and culture or science. City walkers have different uniforms to represent their roles and residential homes upgrade visually as their needs are met, making a nice feedback loop of: build the necessary buildings for the people, watch city walkers patrol and provide, then watch residential properties grow. Homes upgrade immediately once provided with what they need, and the game lets you know what the residents are looking forward to next. Once homes upgrade, more citizens can flock to your city, ultimately supporting more workers or military.

The residents here need to be taught by more scientists before they’ll improve their homes.
Just wait until a scientist walks by these unsuspecting residents.

Zeus manages to live on after 20 years by including a custom campaign editor. Even after 20 years, players are still creating and uploading custom adventures, with the most recent user submitted adventure named The Famine, uploaded February 16th, 2022, which is themed around Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. The author posts their creation with pride and the reviews are glowing. It’s beautiful to see this game still live on after 20 years. The core game design elements still stand strong today, despite dozens of other city builders competing on the market. There’s something special Impression Games hit on with their simplified city building, flavor infused, Greek gods game. I sank almost 60 hours into this game over the past month, all because I saw this game was on sale. I didn’t even know the game still had a community of players still engaged with it, developing city blocks and campaigns to this day.

Atlantis Sandbox – a community map displaying beautiful housing blocks in mountainously confined spaces.

There is a special kind of fun in organizing and developing cities. At times, Zeus even toes the lines of a real-time strategy game with resource development, military, and deadlines. There are usually multiple solutions to any campaign, which provides freedom to map designers, allowing maps to feel different despite sharing tools. The fantasy of worshipping Greek gods and developing beautiful cities is truly experienced in this game. It is a definite recommend from someone who cherishes replay value. It is certainly not an easy game, but it is indeed a rewarding one, both in systemic organization and in fantasy engagement. If you love city building and Greek mythology as much as I do, this game is a must-experience.