Author: Paranoia first launched the "You Thinking" public account
Balatro recently surpassed one million sales, and the analysis of the whole network is flying all over the world.
So why am I writing such an article?
Because this game is consistent with my own understanding of solo travel and meat pigeon, thinking about this game can also provide me with some ideas.
I have the following questions about this game:
Why is the clown card so popular? Why can't people stop?
The joker card has a myriad of advantages that can be overlooked across the board, but why can these shortcomings be ignored and have little impact on the experience?
Can the success of the joker be replicated, and what can the joker teach me?
......
1. Is the success of the clown card accidental or inevitable?
1.1 Author's experience and creative process
From the interviews and introductory videos with the Joker authors, we can briefly summarize the following information.
Author's Experience:
- More than 10 years of development experience, planning, programming, art all-round.
- From relevant interviews, it can be known that the clown card is completed by him personally except for music.
- This is one of the core reasons why the clown cards are highly unified in terms of graphics, gameplay, and music.
Creative History:
- Author LocalThunk was originally inspired by the desire to make a "hoe land" where you can play online with your friends during the pandemic
- Later, after seeing a few videos of "Lucky Landlord" on the Internet, the author decided to make a meat pigeon game instead, but at that time there was no clear concept of the game (in fact, the author didn't play "Lucky Landlord" much)
- In the end, we see a version that is determined after a long period of trial and error, iteration, and testing: the author tries to iterate and create in a direction that he finds interesting after each test.
- After 18 months of development, I quickly became addicted to learning how to make controller support for card games because I wanted to learn how to use "Slay the Spire". The author was pretty sure that if he had experienced Slay the Spire before creating the clown card, there would have been a lot of content that would have been imperceptible to his design.
From the above we can draw some conclusions:
The author is experienced and versatile, very stable and patient (he has been doing it for 10 years in his amateur and has not been online except for the clown card, so he will not blindly follow the trend and affect his own design), and has established his own creative system that can continue to try, iterate and improve.
1.2 The core concept of the game: playing cards, clowns
For the sake of discussion, I would like to first define the term "super concept":
Super concepts refer to concepts with extremely rich meanings that can trigger rich associations, physical perceptions, and emotional resonance in readers.
For example, pandas and Chinese New Year are super concepts.
When it comes to pandas, we can think of national treasures, cuteness, flowers, black and white color schemes, and even tongue sticking out stalks, the experience of baby pandas abroad, and the movie Kung Fu Panda......
When we talk about the Spring Festival, we will think of holidays, Spring Festival, home reunions, Spring Festival Gala, couplets, fireworks, Lantern Festival......
The first super concept is: playing cards.
One of the factors for the success of the joker is that it uses some of the rules of Texas Hold'em and grades, which greatly reduces the player's initial learning cost.
But in the interview, the author reveals why he thinks solitaire and rogue would be a good combination:
- Modern card games are widely used in almost every culture around the world, and the author felt that the standard card deck itself could be a unique medium for emergent game design
- People will always love the feeling of holding a deck of cards, as well as adjusting the cards, thinking about when to play what cards and what cards to leave. While strategy games are generally very information-intensive, card games are a very simple and familiar way to play.
In the picture above, I wrote "Playing Cards: Body Memories Engraved in DNA"
- We grew up with all kinds of "cards": playing cards, Water Margin, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, and now the Ultraman cards that children love to play, and the card games such as "Slay the Spire" in solo games are also very popular.
- In various film and television works and real life, playing cards is often fascinating: the cool card skills of the God of Gamblers and the Saint of Gamblers, Qiu Shuzhen's famous scene of holding cards, and Texas eggs are all kinds of entertainment activities loved by high-end people......
So playing cards is a veritable super concept:
Mobilize body perception, trigger rich associations, and stimulate emotional resonance.
Recently, there was an interesting question to the effect that "Persona 6" is still set in high school instead of college, and foreign media expressed disappointment, what do you think?"
Also as a super concept, high school is clearly better than university: not everyone has gone to university, and many people in Japan enter society after graduating from high school. And the experience of studying at a university in different countries and regions is also very different. - If you switch to a university, it is difficult to make all users feel emotionally resonant.
The Joker is obviously the finishing touch to the game, so let's take a look at the author's interview first:
- There aren't any jokers in the early game, and the main strategy mechanic is to upgrade the cards to be played in the shop.
- The author felt that there was something clearly missing in this version, and he looked at a lot of pictures of solitaire for inspiration. So he came up with the idea of using the Joker/Ghost cards as "passive items". As a painter, the author immediately fell into it, and his eyes suddenly opened up.
- The concept of a clown card is a great way to get a lot of interesting art design ideas. In the end, after a lot of balance adjustments, additions and deletions, we were presented with a lot of fun, playable, and relatively balanced clown cards
As a super concept of clown, the meaning is also rich to the limit:
Circus clowns, clown masks, supervillains, and the big and small kings (ghosts) of playing cards, because they are big and small kings in playing cards, joker also has the meaning of "trump card", and the clown expression, because the clown mask also has the contrast of laughing and crying behind the mask.......
In the picture above, I mentioned "clown: a super concept that serves as a mouth, substitution, and emotional catharsis at the same time", and the concept of clown has provided users with a large amount of emotional value in the era of short videos:
- As a clown who speaks for (substitutes for users to express their thoughts and hearts): "Listen to my brother's advice, don't be a clown" and "Clown's counterattack"
- As a clown who laughs at himself, substitutes, and emotional catharsis: "The clown is actually myself", clown emojis in many cases
- And the contrast between the clown mask and the clown meaning itself mentioned above also has its own narrative: the clown symbol itself has a rich story, film and television works, and the contrast of taking off the clown mask, or taking off the clown mask to become oneself, or becoming a trump card......
To sum up:
The super concept is actually in line with what I have repeatedly mentioned as "like = familiar + unexpected".
Playing cards is familiar to players, and the card type as the basic rule is intuitively designed, while the meat pigeon + playing cards is unexpected;
People will always be interested in things that are both familiar and unfamiliar, and players will be interested when the clown of playing cards no longer enters the deck but becomes a "joker".
At the same time, the super concept of clown comes with narrative elements and a large number of emotions, which gives the clown card the potential to break the circle in the short video era.
Game Surprise Design: Gives you a master key for game planning
1.3 When the degree of completion becomes a differentiated longboard
As a game of only 60M, the Joker card has an amazing degree of completion. Let's take a look at the author's sharing first:
- I usually get inspiration from real-life things, so a lot of the joker cards in this game have a personal theme
- To make everything more visually coherent, I also set some limits on the art creation side, setting rules around color palettes, resolutions, UI standardization, and strict decks
- For example, with the exception of the legendary Joker, all the other Joker cards have the word "Joker" written somewhere, and they were drawn by me with a mouse and a pixel art software called Aseprite
It can be seen that the author pays great attention to the narrative elements (themes) of the clown, and the consistency of expression (involving feedback).
Here's why this game has a high level of completion[4]:
- After entering the game, the first thing that catches our eyes is the overall audio-visual performance of the clown card with great style: "CRT retro style" + "synthwave music" + "colorful but highly unified clown card" - such a coherent audio-visual performance, the initial score is directly full
- Next, we will perceive a high degree of consistency in the game's gameplay * screen * packaging: blinds, antes, hand types, etc. are based on playing cards; the image of the clown card has narrative elements and is highly consistent with the function of the gameplay, and the distinction between different qualities is very obvious; wax seals and versions have excellent performance that fits the reality elements and functions......
- The most commendable thing is the game's dynamic interactions, hints, and feedback, which are worth talking about in detail.
Source: Yang Jiayang's level design sharing
The UI animations of the clown card are extremely silky and smooth, and the interface information itself is full of hints and feedback:
- Game hints are used to drive player action, and game feedback is a response to the player's action and provides information about the outcome. Why hints and feedback are the "golden rules" of game design has been posted in the image above. At the same time, prompts and feedback should also be done as much as possible, and all the design elements that can be used should be used
- The clown card can be said to be fully in line with these design rules: any operation has interface prompts, animations, special effects, sound effects, and the complete matching body feeling is very comfortable and smooth, see the above card animation for example, and the "boss" blind note that does not exist in the game is directly presented with the corresponding dynamic background, and the feeling is in place; the animation and feedback of the game opening the package are also very refreshing (see the figure below)
To sum up:
Thanks to the full-stack ability of Cheng Cemei, the author of the clown brand, the clown brand has made an overall high degree of completion with a high degree of uniformity, great style, and smooth and silky feedback at a low development cost.
Such a high degree of completion has become a differentiated longboard instead of the Steam solo track that does not have a lot of completion.
Coincidentally, Slay the Spire, which the Joker card borrowed from the controller control, also achieved good hints and feedback, but the overall performance was actually slightly worse than that of the Joker card.
* If the clown card is not made by an individual, it is estimated that the cost of communication will be high to make such an overall performance.
2. Gameplay: The core experience of Rogue and the advantages and disadvantages of clown card gameplay
The games that deal with the contrast in this section are mainly Slay the Spire, and the design of the clown itself has been analyzed in many articles.
2.1 The in-game build formation mechanism of "Slay the Spire".
Taking Kill the Spire as an example, the build process of the card building meat pigeon is basically as follows:
- Players will have a set of final builds and out-of-battle combinations that they can expect before the battle. For example, the initial character, equipment, and initial deck are out-of-battle combinations, while the shield flow and perfect strike flow are the expected genres
- During the battle, the final build direction will be adjusted according to the real-time situation. Builds are generally at least two-tiered. On the first floor, there will be a lot of picks, such as the card to kill the spire. There will be some key cards in the deck, and once you get them, you can basically determine the genre. The other is a generic effect that has fewer choices, but at least strengthens a certain aspect of the player's abilities, or strengthens a key that has undergone a qualitative change in the genre, such as the Relic of the Killing Spire. After the two levels are superimposed, they are often not 1+1=2, but will undergo qualitative changes, which is the coolness of their synergistic effect
The build process is designed to provide choice and predictability on a random basis, with a certain sense of surprise:
- Optional: Map route selection for killing spires, 1 out of 3 for reward selection, 1 choice for multiple choices
- Predictable: Maps and map events are tiered and predictable
- Surprise: Random, question mark events for rewards
There is a qualitative change point in such a build form, but the experience in the composition process of build is not very clear:
- First, you need to form a basic build deck, get the key card (such as the card that stacks armor and can't lose armor), and then form a linkage with the basic build to improve the build, and then you need relics to strengthen the build, and delete the library before it can be fully formed. It's a long process
- The advantage of this is that due to the abundance of build elements, many combinations can be generated (the more basic build levels, the greater the possibility and coolness of the combination), and there is a lot of room for exploration. It will be a long time to continue to play and feel fresh, and since it is difficult to build, the coolness of a single molding will also last for a long time
- But the disadvantage is that the cost of learning is higher. One is that players have more points to memorize, each genre has a key, and there must be a series of fillers around the key. The second is to test the player's operational ability, how to make effective choices, and how to choose between risks and benefits. The third is the feedback of the qualitative change point, when the qualitative change point is obtained, there is no direct and clear feedback, but it needs to be reflected in battle.
Card building meat pigeon, very test of design ability, want to break through the killing spire in the gameplay is basically impossible, at this time you need to change your thinking. For example, there are breakthroughs in packaging, monster trains that reduce the difficulty and uncertainty of construction, Void Vaults that remove the deleted library and fix the number of cards in the deck, and Fraud Land that uses narrative as a selling point are all excellent students.
Previously, my judgment was that it was basically impossible for the card meat pigeon to break through the killing spire in terms of gameplay design, but the clown card has achieved a differentiated breakthrough from the gameplay itself, and it is more addictive.
Let's use "Killing the Spire" as the target to talk about it.
2.2 好的rogue元素和小丑牌的build
Let's start with a definition of a good roguelike element:
Meaningful randomness: Randomness provides meaningful choice and predictability with a certain sense of surprise.
Experience the build with large variance: build a strong growth, large random interval, rich genre effects, and qualitative and cool points.
Let's compare the in-game builds of the Kill Spire and the Clown:
The above is a comparison of the build of "Slaying the Spire" and "Joker", which can be felt more intuitively:
The build structure of the Joker card is more complex than the Killing Spire, which is one of the reasons why the Joker card is addictive to play.
But I said it earlier
"Card building meat pigeon, very test of design ability, want to break through the killing spire in the gameplay is basically impossible, at this time you need to change your thinking. ”
This judgment is actually based on the build of the Killing Spire and the complexity of the battle:
There are already a lot of elements in "Slaying the Spire", and a richer build actually requires more elements, and "Slaying the Spire" itself is not easy to get started, and it will be more difficult to break through here, so we must change our thinking and make differentiated designs.
Joker cards are not difficult to play, rich in build elements, and high replay value
- It seems impossible to trianguine.
But in fact, the joker card does two things to avoid the difficulty and complexity of getting started:
- Using Texas Hold'em's card types and score rules as the basic concept, it greatly reduces the cost of getting started. This one was talked about earlier
- Simplified combat and changed to pure numerical verification. We'll talk about this below
In the Joker, no matter how complex the build is, at the end of the day, you only have to focus on one formula:
Score = chips x multiplier
In addition to this, the clown card takes inspiration from the interest mechanism of auto chess, adding an economic dimension to the build. So even with the economy, players only need to focus on 3 concepts in the end:
- Chips, multipliers, money
- Score = Chips * Multiplier
- Score = (Chip Accumulation) x (Multiplier Cumulative Bonus x Multiplier 1.... x multiplier n)
Simple combat verification and simple numerical concepts are the confidence of the clown card to dare to make a complex build system.
And playing build is the core experience of the clown card, and it is not wrong to say that the clown card is to play build, which is also the differentiated design of the clown card compared to the killing spire.
2.3 Random gains and losses of joker cards
Probably the most controversial design for the Joker card is that it's too random.
Another problem I've experienced is that there is room for improvement in interactions.
Let's talk about the latter first, some of the layout and interaction design of the clown card are even worse than the humble "Lucky Landlord", for example, the round information can actually be placed in the upper left corner, the display and refresh of coupons can be more explicit, and the two buttons in the display area can actually put some valid information...... However, these interaction slots have little impact on the gaming experience.
I also found it problematic at first that the game was too random, and I was able to quickly come up with a bunch of "improvement plans":
Some of the early cheat tags are not out in front of them (the level mechanic of skipping the blinds is interesting, and the boss tag will target the player's deck, which also means that the player needs to build a more versatile build); the clown card is too random, and it is possible to introduce a design similar to the level of the auto chess store, or the probability of the sold card being returned is greatly reduced......
But I suddenly asked myself a soul question: "I'm also worthy of teaching a million-selling guy to make games?
I continued to play a lot of tricks, and finally came to the following conclusions:
"Clown Cards" is a pure dog gambling game.
Looking at it this way, the clown card was not wronged at all because of the gambling element rating of 18+. (Not)
With this clarified, the pros and cons of random design are clear:
Gambling and randomness are two sides of the same coin, and if you don't have random, you can't be targeted, and there is no fun in gambling.
Therefore, for some players who are not interested in betting and are not potential gambling dogs, they may not be interested in this game.
At this point, you can go back to the soul question above: "I also teach the million-selling boss to make games? He really doesn't know these problems?"
I think the author knows, otherwise why would he do seed copying and sharing?
The system design of seed replication and sharing is also ironclad evidence that he understands the fun of gambling dogs at the distribution level:
- The gambling dog has come back countless times, just for the trembling of the peak. So the replay price of the joker card is small.
- With the extreme breed, the gambling dog itself has gained a strong pleasure. At this time, they will have a strong desire to share, so you will see the description of "the ultimate anti-natural kind of sharing, fast forward" on various social platforms, circle of friends and other places, and those who don't know will probably scold their mother if they click in
- And sharing screenshots of cool seeds and their own anti-sky values is also a kind of emotional venting and showing off: Is it big or not? Come and try my seeds, even if you use my seeds, you don't have my skills and luck, and you're as big as me (not)
3. The inspiration of the clown card to me
3.1 Revelation from the Joker Author
In fact, the experience of the author of the clown card reminds me of several life experiences shared by the author of "Dumb Bert" in the previous "Giant's Tools":
1. Build a system for yourself, not a goal.
Adams spent a long time working as an amateur painter and writer, but it brought him little in return, and his girlfriend asked him why he couldn't answer. But after his success, he concluded:
He did this not to accomplish a specific "goal", but to develop a "system".
The so-called "goal", you do this thing to do it well, if you succeed, you will be rewarded, and if you fail, you will do it in vain.
What Adams calls a "system" is something that changes continuously, either as a skill or as a relationship, such as a husband and wife. For the sake of this system, you can do all kinds of projects, you can ask yourself what habits to develop, you don't want the success or failure of a specific event, but the development of the system. [6]
Does this description sound familiar? The clown author has been working amateur for so many years, and he has not launched a single one, but he has built his own creative system that can keep trying, iterating, and improving.
2. Inspiration relies more on the body than the brain.
Basically, Adams would empty his brain after breakfast, learn new information about his daily life, and get inspiration and material for his next cartoon or article.
And when browsing information, he said that we should listen to the judgment of the body because the brain is prone to overthinking. If your body reacts strongly to something, then someone else will probably care about it as well.
In fact, this has been confirmed by the research on embodied cognition in recent years.
3. Develop a few more proficient skills in yourself.
Adams says that if you want to excel, you probably have two options:
- You have honed one of your skills to the best in the world. It's very difficult, and very few people can do it
- You can choose two skills and practice each skill to the top 25% of the world, which is relatively easy.
There are very few people who have two skills that can rank in the top 25% at the same time.
And if you can combine these two skills to do one thing, you may be able to achieve great things. Adams himself can reach the top 25% of drawing and writing jokes, so he combined the two to draw "Dumb Bert Comics"
In addition, Adams also has many years of office experience and understands office politics - these three skills are combined, and a hit is produced.
For the author of the clown card. The combination of game design, programming, and art, and continuous efforts to persevere for a long time is what makes the clown a success.
To sum it up in my own words:
"Prepare with heart, unintentionally shoot" "When you do it for a long time, think deeply, and do it ruthlessly"
3.2 What are the opportunities and lessons learned from the Joker?
First of all, gambling: Lucky Landlord, the inspiration for the clown card, is a more pure game of dog betting. Even in the concept of the game, it is a setting of a gambling dog with nothing, only constant gambling to pay the rent.
Coincidentally, the author of another hit "Vampire Survivor" revealed behind the scenes of Noclip's development[7] that he first worked as a waiter at McDonald's and later worked for a company that made mobile slot games. In his spare time, he found an outlet for developing a more expressive game, and that game was Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivor is clearly a minimalist design after the author's full understanding of the bottom of human nature, and there are also obvious gambling elements.
And in the mobile game circle, fishing, coin master, and monopoly are obvious gambling games
The hit "The Strongest Snail" of the year had a strong gambling element
And the core mechanism behind another popular match-3 "Royal Match" is also gambling......
I'm not a big fan of this kind of design that uses human nature, but it is visible to the naked eye that it is human nature that makes the most profitable game.
Another impression and reflection is:
Don't let the rigid genre limit your thinking.
I've said to many friends in the game industry that relying on a stable framework to make money means that this is the "framework bonus", but such a good era is about to pass. We need to be truly innovative and not be locked into a small circle by past experience.
The author of the Joker card, after absorbing a lot of the design merits of the game, did not become the next "Lucky Landlord" or "Slay the Spire", but made a unique "Joker card".
This reminds me of another game "Tarkov": Maozi became popular during the continuous update of Tarkov, and they did not make a chicken mode into the game like other companies, but drew on the excellent design of chicken to achieve the current Tarkov.
Recently, I saw the news of the chicken mode of "World of Warcraft", which made people sigh, Blizzard really can't do it - nostalgic for the "Blizzard production must be a high-quality product".
Finally, there is the reflection on whether the clown card like has a chance.
If the clown card is played in mobile, the frustration caused by too much randomness must be addressed, and the mobile gamer is not paying for it and is not so patient.
If the clown card changes skins, it may be difficult to find a very suitable and low-cost subject matter. But as far as I know, some R&D has done clown cards such as the Three Kingdoms clown card, which may not be as good as Wanning chess, backgammon, Go, and military chess.
I personally feel that there is an opportunity for directions: to preserve the numerical fun and enhance the combat experience/verification.
Reference:
1^Translation: LocalThunk, producer of Balatro, in an interview with Rogueliker https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv32813544/
2^The author of the Balatro joker card is not simple, let's see if we can learn from his success https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1PH4y1j7Vd/?vd_source=ed40cf3e1a47e10d4852b14d71251ee1
3^Joker Creator: I love playing competitive games, but the roguelike mechanics fascinate me even more https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/idKZUT6BPCHCO2l5Pq_qVQ
4^ The first explosion of the year: "The clown" is actually me? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rOsjTJ25vGtc9Nlq3c53nA
5^从吸血鬼幸存者到弹壳特攻队:浅谈rogue玩法的手游化思路 Paranoia Paranoia https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/567965600
6^"The Giant's Tools"| Wanwei Steel Interpretation
7^The development of Gallant, the original creator of the Vampire Survivors documentary