this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
691 points (99.3% liked)

Games

16936 readers
298 users here now

Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)

Posts.

  1. News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
  2. Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
  3. No humor/memes etc..
  4. No affiliate links
  5. No advertising.
  6. No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
  7. No self promotion.
  8. No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
  9. No politics.

Comments.

  1. No personal attacks.
  2. Obey instance rules.
  3. No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
  4. Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.

My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.

Other communities:

Beehaw.org gaming

Lemmy.ml gaming

lemmy.ca pcgaming

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

I recently played it. If anything I think it has a subtle anti-gambling message.

The more hands you play, the more you realize you can't actually win without "cheating"

Play it like poker? Congrats, you're fucked, you literally cannot win against the blind.

Stack the deck in your favor with creative use of Joker cards and a few dozen extra aces? The game becomes trivial

If the game teaches you anything it's that if you play by the rules, the house will ALWAYS win.

I just played it last night, and then again today with my kids watching. I explained how the hands are scored, and they seemed to get the gist of it.

It has absolutely nothing to do with gambling. You don't wager anything, there's no opponents, and the terminology is all different, for example:

  • blind - in poker, it's a forced bet based on sitting position from the dealer; in Balatro, it's where you're at in the "level" (and only the "boss blind" is required)
  • ante - in poker, it's the minimum bet to participate; in Balatro, it's the level you're on
  • hand - in poker, it's the cards you are dealt, and you play them all; in Balatro, it's a scoring action, and you only play a subset of your cards in a given "hand"

And so on. The only thing that's actually similar is the hand scoring system, but you mess with that as well with buffs and whatnot. Balatro will make you a worse poker player, and not even teach you the rules.

I don't think it's anti-gambling, it has nothing to do with gambling. It's like saying solitaire and blackjack are similar because they both use playing cards...