Motivating Exploration in Balatro

https://eggplant.show/136-going-in-blind-with-balatro

1:07:53 - 1:09:51

“I was playing Risk of Rain 2 at one point, which I thought I was safe, because that game is really different than what I was trying to go for, but one [part of that machine? not quite intelligible] that I really, really love was—and I know people hate it too, it’s the funniest thing—is the specific unlock conditions for things, and the fact that a lot of the game is gated behind needing to do stuff, just general meta-progression tasks like that. No meta-progression about, like, if you beat the game 10 times then you get +1 hand every time, to artificially make yourself seem like you’re getting better. ome of the more complex ideas behind general tasks, maybe a goal to look at when you’re playing a game*. Like my favourite ones are, there’s five jokers, they’re all very powerful, they’re times multiplier jokers for each poker hand, so like for pairs, or three of a kind, or flush, or straights, or whatever, and the way you unlock them is by winning the game without ever playing that poker hand. So, they’re ways to push the player into exploring the design space of the game that I created, where they might not do that if they didn’t have some of these meta-progression goals. And that’s just jokers. But a lot of different parts of the game have something similar like that, like decks being unlocked, same thing, it forces you to try new decks, and challenges being unlocked, it forces you to try previous challenges to get to the end. So the main reason for it was just a tool to the help the player motivate themselves to have more fun in the end, ultimately, to explore this design space that I created”