TecRah

Wen Feng Ruiyang

Editor Liu Shiwu

Apart from the 爆冷 of the Cosmic Robot, there were still a lot of honorable mentions in the 2024 TGA winners, including the relatively niche Joker, which won against all odds.

At the TGA Awards Ceremony on the morning of December 13, Balatro Joker won three awards, including Best Indie Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game. Previously, it also won Apple’s Apple Arcade Game of the Year and was nominated for TGA’s Game of the Year.

To date, Joker has sold 3.5 million copies and has received rave reviews on the Steam Store98, yet it was developed by a single developer, LocalThunk, who is a newcomer to the game. One can’t help but wonder how a small-scale card game can achieve such success with its creative gameplay design without strong art, almost no community operation, and even no plot and no protagonist.

Simple rules and varied gameplay, low threshold and easy to get started.

Joker is a Rougelike card game. It borrows from Texas Hold’em in terms of card types and concepts, but has completely different scoring methods and game objectives.

Joker Game Screen

In Joker, players need to complete rounds to reach higher levels of underbets. Each level of betting is divided into small blinds, big blinds and bosses. When playing the Boss at each level of betting, you will encounter a debuff on the rules.

During each round, players will have several opportunities to play and discard up to five cards per play. The score of a single turn is determined by a combination of the type of card played, the current level of that card, special buffs provided by the deck, buffs provided by the Joker, buffs provided by the level or coupon, etc. The score of each turn is determined by the number of times a card is played and the current level of that card. If the score is not reached, the game will end immediately.

If a player passes a particular round, he or she may be able to upgrade by purchasing Joker cards, Tarot cards, Planet cards, Star cards, Game cards, etc. in the subsequent store in order to obtain higher scores in subsequent rounds.

Common card strategy games, such as Hearthstone or KARDS, involve players editing a deck of cards outside of the game, entering the game and playing cards using this already established deck, with the goal of the game being to zero out the opponent’s life points through damage that will accumulate.

Joker decks, on the other hand, have nothing that can be edited outside of the game. Inside the game it is divided into two states: during the round and between rounds All editing and strengthening of the deck occurs between rounds, with the goal of being able to play cards in the following rounds to gain higher scores in order to pass the level for that round.

In contrast, Meat Pigeon play brings more randomness More varied gameplay Before starting a game, players have absolutely no choice or judgment about what will happen in the next matchups Each game may hold new surprises.

Within these rules, Joker is virtually plotless, and players do not need any background knowledge to start playing.

Compared to similar games such as Meat Pigeon or Killing Spire, Joker is based on the description of mathematical concepts in playing cards. The simpler scoring rules make it easier for players to get started. Unlike the blood count mechanism of Slaying Spire, Joker has only two outcomes per round: passing and failing, and mistakes do not accumulate, so players do not need to be overly anxious.

Killing Spire’s gameplay, block, power and other concepts are abstract and take time to understand.

Joker provides strong and timely feedback through simple graphics and sound effects. For example, if the turn score is met with a single play, the numbers at the chip and multiplier will start to shake, and the icon will start to catch fire with a corresponding burning sound effect. For example, if there are multiple multipliers on a hand, each multiplier calculation will be accompanied by a ding sound effect that gets higher and higher in pitch, and the numbers on the screen get bigger and bigger, creating an audible impact.

The official Joker promotional video shows the scoring area shaking and burning when a single card is played extremely well.

In addition, Joker is overall fast-paced, with each game lasting up to about twenty minutes. The score requirements for each level of the underbelly pass increase rapidly, with underbelly 1 requiring only 300 points, underbelly 6 requiring 20,000, underbelly 11 requiring 7,200,000, and underbelly 16 requiring 8,600,020. Each round, either you don’t have enough points to get out of the game, or you get almost double the points, which gives the player a gambling-like thrill.

Clever design to cope with the common problems of pigeon games

In addition to its many advantages, Joker has also found its own way to cope with the common problems of meat pigeon games, to avoid the negative experience of discouraging players, and these skillful treatments are worth learning from.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is the balance of strength between different builds.

A build is a series of enhancements in a specific direction that work together to achieve a better effect, for example, All Cards are Heads and Heads 5x belong to the same build system.

There are at least a few dozen different types of Joker builds, and not only are there a dozen or so types of cards that can be played, but it is also possible to complete a build that is purely based on Joker, which makes balance especially important. If the balance is not good, and some builds are too strong and some are too weak, then the game has a standard answer, and players will feel frustrated if they can’t complete the strongest builds during the game.

There are 150 types of jokers in the game, offering a wide variety of power-ups.

In order to achieve overall balance, the bonuses provided by each non-developmental joker are basically stabilized in terms of pure value.

These Jokers can be categorized into those that provide chip bonuses and those that provide multiplier bonuses, with chip Jokers adding 50,150 chips and multiplier Jokers adding 15,50 multipliers or multiplying by 1,533. While the maximum number of cards that can be played when the optimal build is fully realized is significantly higher, each build has a lower limit of strength that is acceptable, even if the draws are not as good. Players who are familiar with the rules can often get through the game by betting 8.

In addition, the Joker has been updated several times since its release to further optimize its balance.

Secondly, there is a need to find a solution to the dilemma between building too easily, which leads to quick boredom after realization, and building too hard, which prevents players from playing the game they want to play. In the face of this dilemma, some of the Joker Coupons, which can only be unlocked in subsequent games after completing certain conditions in the game, slow down the speed at which players can complete a full build.

Overall, it is very difficult to realize a specific build in a normal Joker game. There is no directional selection mechanism for Jokers, and the Jokers that come out of the store are purely random, so players can only choose to buy a specific Joker when it appears. Jokers do not appear in cycles, meaning that you cannot reduce the probability of a specific Joker appearing by buying it and then selling it, for example.

However, the Joker deck offers 20 different Challenge Games with initial presets, providing a variety of base builds that players can choose from when they want to get a specific experience.

Figure Some of the Challenge Games with specific rules

Finally, the Meat Pigeon game requires a restart every game, and no matter how many trillions of points are scored in the first game, the next game still starts with a few dozen or a few hundred points in the initial deck, and there is no way to know if the game will end up exceeding the all-time high.

The reason why many players abandon the game is that after reaching one superb build, they feel that there is nothing more to pursue, and that the game is boring. In Joker, although the criterion for passing a certain round is the score of the cards played, the outward, non-numerical actions that players perform in the process can be fun in their own right.

It may be frustrating to do 5,000 damage in one game and only 4,000 damage in the next, but it can be twice as pleasurable to do a five of a kind in the last game and a flush in the next.

With one and only one card of each suit value in the opening game, making modifications to the deck through tarot cards, etc., and ultimately playing five of the same card at once is a pleasure that can be obtained without the need for numerical values as an incentive. In the Joker, there are many other kinds of coolness.

Five of a Kind Glass Cannon Image Source B station uploader Xiao Xiao Xiao zx

These clever designs make the game highly playable while being small and meat-pigeon and cards.

Back to the essence to bring players a good gaming experience

For players, in the early stages of playing Joker, they can find different Jokers and realize a variety of constructions, which can be fresh and new. In the middle stage, as their understanding of the game improves, players can use cards that are similar to the original cards to play an exponentially expanding score, and they can gain a great deal of sense of accomplishment.

And when the game length reaches hundreds of hours, put all the clowns with gold stickers, glass cannons, a cannon ten billion and other achievements to collect and live gameplay, can also become a new pursuit of the player, to provide more space to play.

Therefore, although there is no main storyline in Joker, players of all stages and styles can find their own goals in the game and have fun in the process of realizing them.

Currently, more and more games emphasize art, music, operation, marketing and other aspects to attract players by making the game more perfect in every aspect, as if it were an interactive movie or a work of art. For example, the card strategy game Library of Ruins, released in 2021, was widely acclaimed for its music and plot, but was slightly criticized for its gameplay.

The theme song of Library of Ruins has more than 5 million views on B-site, even more than the game itself.

While Joker is more of a return to the essence of the game, bringing players a good gaming experience through interesting gameplay and mechanics.

Nowadays, we have better hardware and software than ever before, but many games just have exquisite graphics but no special features, and complicated mechanisms are all sewn together, which makes players complain that the games are not fun anymore.

The success of Joker proves an important fact that the gaming industry seems to have ignored for a long time. As a game, having enough fun is the easiest, most direct and most powerful way to attract players.

In the Steam store, Joker has a 98% positive rating from all reviews, and even a 99% positive rating from recent reviews.

In this small year of gaming, Joker’s alternative success deserves our attention and consideration.

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