It’s that time of the year when I give out weird and quirky awards to games that moved me in one way or another. This year, there were several games I played that I was really divided over how I felt about them. Several of the games I will be noting this year are very jagged in how I feel about them.
That said, in this post I want to mention my non-From game of the year from last year, Balatro (Local Thunk). Why? because most of my play time of it was from this year. When I bestowed it my non-From game of the year last year, I had just started playing the game. I did not know how deep it went, really, or how deep into it I would get. I wrote several more posts after that, and I played tons of hours more as well. I nearly got the plat, but the last two achievements are ridiculous.
One of my defining gaming moments of the year came from this game. It was doing all the challenges, which turned out to be such a pain in the ass. When I first tried them, I was fairly early on in my Balatro career, and I failed to do a single one. Each one has a gimmick to it, and when I tried them again, I was much later on and more savvy as to how to actually play the game. I started doing them one after the other, and I knocked most of them down pretty effortlessly.
Until I came to the end. There were two that made me raise my eyebrows. One was Golden Needle in which you only had one hand per round. I had trouble doing that with the boss The Needle (one hand), so doing it for every hand in a whole run? It seemed impossible.
And it nearly was. But I did it, and I was pretty proud of myself for getting through it. There was a guy in the Balatro channel of the Discord I’m in who started doing the challenges later than I did, but quickly caught up by the time I reached the last few. (There are twenty of them.) The last one, Jokerless, nearly made me lose my mind. The name of it pretty much tells you what the challenge is–beating a run with no jokers.
I tried it using my usually pair/high card strat and did not even come close. I had to look up strats for it, plus the other guy and I discussed it as he reached it, too. He was a straights guy, using it as his usual strat. I don’t do anything straight, but I was desperate enough to try. He gave me some tips, and I continued to chip away at it, pun intended.
It was awful. That’s when all the joy of the game was drained for me. I should have just stopped and put it behind me, but I could not do that. Plus the guy in the Discord and I were egging each other on, and I did not want to let him down. There was something cool about bonding with him over failing this challenge over and over again.
One way to beat this challenge was to do math. I was not going to do that so I had to make sure that I beat each hand by a comfortable margin. I watched a video on how to beat this challenge, and the biggest takeaway was to keep my straights open-ended on both sides (insert mildly risque sex joke here), even if I had the ace in hand. Oh, and of course the straight had to be 10-A for maximum chips. I pruned the deck like I had never pruned before–something I never did.
I tried for literal days to beat this challenge. And at some point, I broke. I said I was not going to keep trying because I did not like what it was doing to me–and I was not enjoying it in the least. The guy in the Discord had beaten it by that point, and he comforted me and tried to cheer me up. He said he knew I could do it, which was sweet of him.
I could not give up, and I eventually eked out a win. By all rights, I should have lost, but I got incredibly lucky in the end. I can’t tell you how relieved I was, especially since it meant
I never had to do it again. Oh, I did watch a video of a guy who offered several tips on how to beat the challenge. I marveled at how easily he did it and how often he got the card he wanted.
There is a lot of luck involved, and I have always thought my luck was exceptionally bad. I knew it was also skill, and I was deficient in that area as well.
The video I included above has Ben Starr as Jimbo, the mascot of the game. One of LocalThunk’s charming quirks is that he does not show his face. Ben Starr was in a trailer for the game, and he’s become the face of Balatro.
I’m bringing up this game because it’s an example of a game that consumed me for months and then I just stopped. I was working on the gold stake for the Plasma deck, which is everyone’s favorite. I could never get the hang of it, and my interest just eventually petered out.
I have not gone back since, and I’m fine with that. I would have liked to have gotten gold stakes on all the decks (which is one of the two achievements I did not get), but that was above my pay grade. I got so much enjoyment out of the game, I can’t begrude it a somewhat salty ending. Which is totally on me, by the way. When I binge on a game, I get a sick feeling in my stomach nearing the end of my time with it when I can’t stop playing. That’s all on me.
I wanted to talk about this game because it shows how I get with a game. Some people play several games at a time–not me. I play one game to the exclusion of others. I devour it, and then I want nothing mor e to do with it once I’m done.
I wish I weren’t like that, but I am. There are some games that even when I motor through them, I still want to play more. Then, there are games that when I inhale them, I never want to play them again.
Balatro is the latter, but I have such fond memories of it. It truly deserved my non-From game of the year award last year.