this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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Balatro. It becomes a spreadsheet sim very quickly, in my opinion. I think part of the reason Binding of Isaac and Hades feel much more timeless to me is that every run has this sort of intuitive randomness vs this just full rng you have to counter with math. Balatro feels solved, and while I guess you could count Hades max heat run as “solving” the game, the replayability of it feels much higher because builds feels more dynamic than “make number go up faster”.
Interesting that you say hades has that intuitive randomness, one of my biggest complaints for hades 1 is that you can basically force whatever run you want every single run. It felt like a roguelike for people who hate roguelikes. Isaac otoh I totally agree, its my most played game by far really love it.
I agree with the person that said you can spreadsheet-ify any game really, and in that way I know how you feel with Hades. I’ve been playing on a relatively young save lately before digging into Hades 2 and it’s been very refreshing not having all the trinkets and rerolls to really get exactly the build I want. Though even then I feel like there will always be some deviation from your plan, but you’re still given tools to tune your build to what you wanted, and you can still overcome the rng with skill expression. With Balatro I often felt I was just loosing a run because I didn’t get a necessary card or something that felt much more out of my control.
Totally agree with Isaac showing this the best. I’ve got friends that have thousands of hours in that game and still come across combos and interactions between items they haven’t found before.
For me, the most boring aspect of Balatro is the first couple blinds. Holy shit am I tired of "you MUST play a flush or straight."
Try plasma, it upends the whole formula.
Not that quickly that you dont get your money's worth though. Balatro is a good mobile game honestly, for a quick run when you have time to kill, but I wouldnt find myself sat at my PC playing it.
Agreed. I didnt get into it until I played on the phone.
That quickly, I can't with this utilitarian consumerist take, like, you didn't buy a game, you bought a minimum specified undetermined quantum of enjoyment. It's so sterile. It's like saying, yeah the first part of the movie was great, but then it turned to shit, so you got your money's worth of enjoyment points so you're overall on plus. Sorry for sounding harsh, it's a pet peeve of mine, I don't like to consider games some sort of staple commodity to wring out enjoyment stats out of and then discard, it's more to the experience than that. It's like watching half a painting, you get some enjoyment out of it, not all of it, but halfway there, so that makes it worth it.
I don't think so.
You determine your own worth of something. But thats literally what paying for something or a service is. Balatro is worth its price to me, I can play it for hours now, not touch it an play it for hours in a year, two, whatever. Someone made a nice game, I buy it and play it, it's about as simple as capitalism gets in games.
Not everything has to have infinite value forever, I will get bored of a game and will never play it again, does that mean I should have never bought it and enjoyed the experience it gave me??? Am I missing your point here or is that just a wild take?
You don't, entirely, and saying that is like saying "well love is just biochemistry. It's all just molecules interacting."
And yeah. That's ONE way of seeing it, a very materialistic and wholly insufficient and even trite way of looking at it devoid of human soul and the actualities of living that experience.
It's basically a resignation to what capitalism is trying to sell you- units of something, you become a statistic, it's not the enjoyment of the food, it's about a sterile transaction between patron and chef, where you get so and so filled to such and such a degree, and that has some specific arbitrary value in money.
It's just such a consumer zombie way of perceiving the world, I just can't.
I'd like to live in that idealistic world you have in your head, but we don't live in that, humans are selfish by nature, so we have capitalism. Doesn't mean we cannot control it, keep it fair. One person makes a cool piece of art? Sure, I'll pay them. You are looking far too deep into it, I'm sorry. You're going to stress yourself out.
No, capitalism is selfish by nature, it makes and promotes people to be selfish. People are genetically altruistic and cooperative. Things, and ownership, and selfishness, is what makes society bad.
You are looking far too shallow into it, and you will stay a slave to that paradigm.
How do you think we ended up with capitalism
I think a select few extremely narcissistic, cynical, and nihilistic psychopaths used their inherited power to institute and entrench a form of resource distribution and valuation that would secure their dynastic succession for centuries and millennia.
People are altruistic, that's why capitalism even works in the first place- in order to compete, we absolutely need to be able to cooperate, if at the very least to all agree on the framework within which we will compete in the first place, to agree on the rules by which we will play. Please do note, the ostensible motivation and raison d'etre of capitalism is that it is the system which will bring about the greatest good for all participants.
Allegedly.
All games are spreadsheets if you look hard enough
It's not breaking the illusion that's the tricky part.
Players will optimize the fun out of any game if given the chance
Thank you, this really describes my feelings towards that game well. The first few runs were great with experimenting and stuff but then you try for higher stakes and quickly fall into the optimal strat flow where it's kinda boring unless you get ridiculous runs but i don't wanna wade through meh to get that one god run that's actually fun.
Some people like spreadsheet sims.