BOSSES

[elfin hatch]

🧵

[halcyon fossil]

given how much character everything else oozes (esp the joker designs) you could probably make boss blinds really cool, but this isnt something i even thought aboutbefore this poll so idt it's an issue if left as is

[runic cove]

I think if you dig you could find some messages from me saying how I feel like the boss blinds are not well characterized, I think its the only thing missing theming wise imo. It feels like everything about the jokers is extremely memorable and well characterized and then you are just fighting against numbers

[elfin hatch]

The intent was that they are kind of ancient runes with special powers, but this is a criticism I have heard enough times to know that wasn't portrayed very well or it wasn't a strong enough idea

[runic cove]

This just totally popped into my head out of nowhere when you said that, but if you wanted to change the theming, you could make each ante a different casino and the boss blinds are playing with a "house rule"

[halcyon fossil]

i like the rune design but i wouldnt say it 'adds to the theme' like, say, tarot or planet cards do

[runic cove]

I think I worded this weirdly, I meant to make each boss blind correspond to a casino (with the boss ability being the house rule) but you get the current boss blinds theming for the whole ante

so even when you are playing a small/big blind it still feels like you are somewhere distinct from other small/big blinds since you are in "the psychic's" casino or whatever

[elfin hatch]

Part of the light theming - and I could be way off base with this - is that I didn't mind Balatro having a more relaxed atmosphere where there weren't any anthropomorphic threats, and instead it was more of a rising tide type enemy. So I didn't go with personified bosses to play off that

I could be wrong there for sure, but there was some reasoning behind it

[warped lark]

if you want to keep the theming light Jimbo could do 1 line quips as intros

[elfin hatch]

Honestly game just needs more Jimbo

[warped lark]

is Jimbo even present outside tutorial and kill screen

[runic cove]

I definitely feel the "rising tide" sort of energy through the mechanics, but not at all through theming or characterization

[warped lark]

Jimbo is the Saw of the Balatroverse

[elfin hatch]

Yeah that was my reasoning but I know there was a failure in that idea at some point

[runic cove]

also I wasnt necessarily trying to make it more anthropomorphic, but rather making it so you are kinda "traveling" between locations playing an increasingly high higher stakes game and facing off with a house rule once you reach the top of that location

[elfin hatch]

I do like that, I think it's probably too late for that kind of pivot though

[runic cove]

yeah fair

[elfin hatch]

Not all these polls are actionable I was just curious what the perception was

[runic cove]

honestly if you just want to make the boss blinds more memorable, swap the phoenecian alphabet icons for icons of what each letter represents

like The Ox being a little icon of an Ox instead of the letter

[digital kiln]

I think some bosses 'do what they say on the tin' so they're more memorable, others the Rune/Name/Effect feel more thrown together out of necessity.
You could have boss blinds in 3 tiers;
In recent years some poker rooms have introduced oversized chips to represent larger denomination chips, then above that again there are rooms that use plaques of very large denominations. You could implement some visual differences between them with this to make them more distinct, but that comes at the cost of them being universally interchangeable outside of the Ante 10 bosses.

[warped lark]

make the boss rune thump like a heart

different from previous, re-emphasizes it's a "boss," and it could speed up at higher tiers or as you close in on the target score

[lusty spindle]

To me, the bosses mostly feel like just another blind, not really like you’re fighting an actual boss

I think they could definitely stand out more from the basic blinds

[remote rock]

I never really thought of the bosses as actual characters.

This is not a misstep or even a problem: I still think of games like this in terms of World x Stage y (substitute synonyms as necessary), which basically is the structure of the game. That the bosses have funny names and an icon means very little to me.

Rather, I see them as... words, essentially, that shorten the boss gimmick into a simple symbol ready for use in language.

[crude fable]

i thought the ideas of symbols for each were cool, but i have no idea what those symbols actually are so they just seem kind of random

[remote rock]

Exactly, so I just accepted them as game-specific words in a game-specific language.

This is the way I see the world, so fair dos if you don't.

[warped lark]

sometimes things don't need lore

[inner flare]

I think the Verdant one is great

Making them more symbolic instead of abstract/anthropomorphic could be nice

Like a raindrop or wave for Water

Very simple but it makes them actually feel more coherent and thematic with the rest of the game

[runic cove]

Yeah I think they would be much more memorable if the icons were what they were named rather than a letter of the phoenician alphabet

[naive apex]

I feel like some bosses' effects don't match very well with some of their effects.

Some do this greatly - The Head stopping Heart card effects, or The Wall being just a damage sponge, for example.

Then we have stuff like The Psychic which must play 5 cards. Which, ehh? I feel like The Psychic and The World could have their names swapped - The Psychic being the "some cards are drawn face-down" and The World being "must play 5 cards"

The flavor of the psychic drawing cards facedown because he's a psychic and doesn't need to see them is very cool and is a bit of a missed opportunity rn I feel

[crude fable]

facedown cards is The Wheel

[naive apex]

Whoops mb

Swap The Psychic and The Wheel's name, in this case

I feel like The World, The Wheel and The Plant's effect don't really fit with their effect

[crude fable]

i think the wheel is meant to be a reference to the wheel of fortune, because random chance is involved in both

i can see the theme of psychic matching too though

[naive apex]

I can see that but it feels pretty wacky, tbfh. With a name like "The Wheel" I'd expect something like "shuffle all cards in hand back to the deck and draw again every turn", as a play on cycle/wheel (card game terms for this action) and also how The Wheel of Fortune can mean renewing cycles in the tarot itself

[nocturne shore]

i think you could address this concern without much intensive work
the rune idea is cool--
you could stylize the boss blind rune symbol where the rune letter inset glows and potentially filters out some light
adds some mysticism and connotates better that these are ancient, powerful runes instead of just flat looking runes trying to representing something

this could also extend to effects while playing the boss as well--
perhaps give your cards while playing the boss a faint glowing outline a la the rune in the same colour as the boss, or slightly change the sound effects for raising/playing/scoring cards to communicate you are playing against a truly different entity

[rose rose]

I enjoy how Balatro has this facelessness to it . It has an ethereal vibe that really strikes for me , I don't think the boss blinds need more characterization. I like the use of runes a lot, though some do feel unrelated to their effect

[tired pulsar]

i really like the blinds as they are. abstract and foreboding by being represented by symbols

[marsh wagon]

the world is a tarot card right? not a boss

also, any particular reason why kaph became "the psychic?" since in phoenician kaph means hand

i get that there's semantic overlap since yod "the arm, the hand" means a very similar thing but why psychic specifically

[naive apex]

Isn't The World one of the bosses? I know it's a tarot card but I think it also is a boss?

[runic cove]

nopers

[elfin hatch]

Phoenecian kaph derives from Hebrew 'palm of hand', so I took some creative liberty and related it more to palm reader ~ psychic

[pearl rover]

Would be cool if a boss had a specific joker assigned to it

[marsh wagon]

oh i was thinking that kaph in modern hebrew also means spoon since its meaning as hand has mostly been supplanted by yod/yad

so i thought of spoon benders lmao

[chilly estuary]

honestly itd be really fun if they could talk like jimbo

like imagine if the head could shit talk

[marble osprey]

Imagine if some bosses put a cursed card into your deck, that hinders your later progress. For example the Head can put an unchangable debuffed heart into your deck.

[inner flare]

That sounds hilarious

That put the idea in my head of bosses being characters from other board games on card like the monopoly man or the Robber from Catan 😆

Definitely not the intended direction but it’s funny to picture

[haughty hill]

I dont need the psychic talking shit about me for playing 4 cards 😂😂

[tired pulsar]

brooooo
cursed cards? a little 'The Arm' stamp on a card forces you to only use it in a hand of 4 or fewer. or a 'The Tooth' stamp that costs $1 to play
so devious but so fun

id love if ng+ had that feature, or on antes past 10 you start acquiring cursed cards

[haughty hill]

Like Slay the Spire's curses?

Thats a neat idea

I'd love a scaling difficulty thing too, like ascension. Including stuff like cursed cards, facing multiple boss blinds in a row etc

Obviously theres ng+

And ng++ and ng+++

Peglin has an ascension thing too

[tired pulsar]

i also think it would add more personification to the blinds if they had a lil more impact in other areas of the game

[haughty hill]

It would also put more emphasis on rerolling boss blinds

If you can get thru a boss fight but the "lasting effect" would fuck you over in the long run it'd be better to skip it

Like "im playing a 5 of a kind deck, i dont wanna get stuck with the arm curse in my deck somewhere

[inner flare]

Wdym it sounds great 😉

[marble osprey]

The Plant giving you a permanent Jack, Queen, and King could be brutal

Honestly, some of the 'curses' could be a huge boon for a deck as well

[crude fable]

cursed cards idea sounds cool

[chilly estuary]

Nah we know psychic is that posh prick who thinks they’re soooo much better than everyone lolol

[haughty hill]

On god

[crude fable]

nOt aLLoWeD

[nocturne shore]

yeah psychic is def the blind that catches me on the check most often

[pearl rover]

I'm sure its a demo thing, but I wish I could see more bosses without skipping a blind

[raven dew]

I personally LOVE LOVE LOVE when Phoenician is used in basically anything. That won me over on the boss blinds immediately. Abstract, ominous, ancient, mystical.

I do think there could be a little more done with characterization without breaking the faceless atmosphere, like some cool VFX like others have described.

There isn't lore, which I love, cause there doesn't need to be. Jimbo is an exception, and even he feels a little out of place in what's otherwise a lore-free, character-free game of pure skill and mental exercise.

If I had any suggestion for boss blinds at all, it would be maybe drawing off of runes of the Elder Futhark for more? I love what I've seen so far.

[raven dew]

Same here
If only to see how certain bosses are "translated"
Kaph as "Psychic" kinda surprised me, I think it translates better as "palm" and fits the five to a hand thing- five fingers, one palm
Resh as "Head" is a slam dunk, and I love the effect (at least when it doesn't screw my run over before it begins)
Teth as "Wheel" is odd to me- I've always seen it as "basket/barrel/jug/well", but I think its effect is cool and makes sense for the name.
Tsade as "Plant" just utterly baffles. I've always seen it as hook/snare/lightning.
Where does the "Flint" come from?

[crude fable]

this was what dev said about psychic

[raven dew]

I like that! It's a cool relation regardless

[chilly estuary]

~~in an alternate universe, we'd have Mr. Fingers 😭 ~~

[hallow python]

side note on UI, could consider to add 3 dots/bars that light up to indicate which blind we are on for that ante so that we know when the vouchers would be refreshed without checking the blinds screen

[smoky basalt]

it does feel a little bland at times for the boss. Perhaps a quip of some sort if you play in a certain way or trigger the unique rule. For example like the Mouth will say: "I see you agree to play [hands] only" after you first play and subsequent hand that is not Full House they will say "[hands] only."
keep quip short and perhaps taunting the player (maybe) might make them a little more interesting

[drifting blaze]

i’m not sure if it fits here, i feel the blinds dead animation/cutscene in particular is a bit lacking. Part of the reason because the blind dead animation stay on the left hand side. also the blind image is repeated inside the result/reward popup and this totally grabbed the player attention

[ruby kite]

Does anyone know where is "The Flint" from ? I can't find it anywhere

[rose rose]

I can't find it after looking at pheonecian and proto canaanite script

It's either made up since pheonecian has no vowels and only 22 consonants, or it's an interpretation of their Z or X

[elfin hatch]

lol I made it up

[rose rose]

You bastard I looked at so many charts lmao

mystery solved

[brisk raptor]

I think the bosses are a bit too generic; however I had the impression they were a reference to Earthbound and maybe other games