#Daily Discussion #13 - January Demo First Impressions

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boreal monolith
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January Demo is here! What are your thoughts?

What are you excited for? What do you think you won't like? What are your predictions about the feel of the demo?

I'm sure discussions like this are happening in pieces already, but everyone's sharing loads of screenshots, so I figured it's still good to have a little more space for actual discussion.

As always, suggest topics for future discussions and tell me if this timing doesn't work for you.

unreal shore
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the january demo is really cool! i'm excited to try out all the different builds magic deck is particularly good at exploiting involving tarots like death + standard packs, and abusing the heck out of tags with the anaglyph deck. a lot of changes (ESPECIALLY to spectral packs, i went from finding them kind of mid to finding them AMAZING) i find to be really interesting!

in terms of things i won't think i'll like, suit jokers worry me. flushes were already an extremely powerful option to get through the early game, and the suit jokers make them even stronger than they already are— i worry that it makes the early game a little... linear, if that makes sense?

that's really all i have at the minute though, i am SO excited to get into more games

knotty marlin
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I haven’t gotten to play the demo yet lmao

charred gate
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Being able to get Polychrome cards from Standard Packs in Round 1 is powerful.
Not overly powerful, but fun powerful

knotty marlin
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But I’ve had fun seeing everyone else so far

novel warren
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It seems really cool, but I'm at school and also can't play it

charred gate
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Pants and Trading card are incredibly fun

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Shortcut, too. Hoping to get to play with Seance eventually

unreal shore
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same

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seance looks like such a fun joker

boreal monolith
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bro i keep forgetting about trading card

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augh

knotty marlin
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Trading card is fun

boreal monolith
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it's great if could just remember to use it lmao

charred gate
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DNA all over again

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GLUK, get ready to get reamed in the comments

boreal monolith
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lmao

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so i forget to use trading card

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and i blame GLUK

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🤔 🤔

knotty marlin
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Sounds like a plan

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Every time I forget, I’ll shout “CURSE YOU GLUK” aloud

charred gate
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GLUK would always forget DNA.
Now he'll forget Trading Card instead

boreal monolith
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lmao

charred gate
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blame him for teaching us bad habits

digital solar
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It’s been fun, excited to completely break this demo! (And then, the full game)

viral geyser
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I'm enjoying the amount of non joker related new content in the new demo

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lots of new stuff if you know where to look

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very enjoyable

quaint dove
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I feel like hack is a little weak? it might have some cool synergy with stuff like gold stamps and glass cards but that's about it

gray olive
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I was pleasantly surprised to see the love to pairs / two pair since I was getting a bit tired of flushes and straights in the last demo. I ended up stumbling into a no discard run with the fool deck so decided to go all in on pairs since it's easier to "discard" extra cards. Pants came in clutch for me in the late game.

timber meteor
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my first thoughts on the demo: it was fun

I'm probably not going to play much more of the demo because release date is already around the corner so here are some quick thoughts:

  • I think buffoon pack frequency was lowered ? It feels better compared to the invitational, I had a lvl 6 jupiter and a lvl 5 planet X run so planet packs feel OK.
  • I don't like hex, the downside is already used by ankh and feels awkward
  • I didn't enjoy the "draw your first hand upside down" boss
  • May be related to its buff but I had good success with a straight + hologram deck, just adding more and more random stuff in the deck
  • Not a fan of potential duplicate pack types in the shop (e.g. mega celestial + jumbo celestial), I prefer having two different options
novel warren
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I actually like the first hand upside-down boss since it makes discards more useful

quaint dove
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I do think runs being longer might be interesting, they usually end before things can get really insane

charred gate
quaint dove
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oh nice!

inner ledge
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Joker feedback (I don't know which are new to this demo):

Fibonacci + Hack is a great package, really enjoy all-ining on 3s and 5s. Makes good friends with Odd Todd

I hate Photograph because I never remember to order my facecards to the end of the hand :(

Spare Trousers are incredible if you get em early enough to build up. Makes good friends with Sly Joker, and maybe Wily Joker if you're doing full houses.

I've gotten... a little value from Green Joker? I think the highest I ever got it was +7 multi. It feels kinda eh. I guess it's meant to be played with Banner, but Banner feels a lot better on its own. Drunkard and Banner is much nicer. Trading Card is also solid with the discard archetype

Shortcut and Four Fingers good :) Just neat cards.

Vagabond! Far and above my favorite joker. Staying poor lets you just get so many tarot cards and have a great deal of control over your deck. Meant to be played with Credit Card I guess, but not really necessary. Makes good friends with Fortune Teller, which I also like. Please don't make it rare 🥺

Diet Cola feels bad because most of the time, skipping blinds feels bad. I like money and visiting the shop :( The shop is sometimes more fun the the blinds. Throwback feels bad for the same reason.

Bull very good! With Credit Card it can give you negative chips, which is funny.

Baseball card seems ok. Not a ton of uncommons that work great together but free polychrome is nothing to scoff at.

Swashbuckler and Gift Card clearly meant to play together. They're alright.

Superposition is solid with Vagabond only incidentally as it gives you more tarot cards after you've already gotten lots of tarot cards to finetune your deck.

Hit the Road seems like it'd be more fun to use if it was a much smaller multiplier increase but permanent. like x0.01 per Jack discarded

Brainstorm is obviously busted (fun)

I never got Seance to go off once. Flower Pot happened once on accident.

gray olive
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Ramen seemed to work well with Green Joker, but you definitely need something else (planets, chip boosters) to keep you in the game while scaling.

potent fern
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My thoughts comparing this demo to the last demo -
Things I like

  • The Magic deck is so cool! If you get an early suit-changing tarot or Death, you can really lock in your strategy early.
  • A lot of the new Jokers are great. Bull, Trading Card, Baseball Card, Popcorn, Swashbuckler, Trousers... there are so many cool things you can build for now, and the ones that involve your money instead of purely what's in your deck is a great way to incorporate all the different aspects of the game.
  • I actually like Supernova being gone, because it lead to samey thoughtless games. "Keep playing this one hand, win."
  • Some spectral cards going from randomly selected cards to cards you select. This is such a great change, it makes spectral packs feel less bad.
  • The seals! I just discovered the Purple Seal now and I love it.
  • New vouchers! Paintbrush is awesome.

Things I don't like / preferred in the previous demo

  • This is the big one: I feel over-rewarded for skipping blinds. If I sit down to play Balatro, I want to play Balatro. But when skipping blinds gives you a shop's worth of free cards, a ton of money, three level ups in a poker hand, etc., it feels like it's better to play as little of the game as possible. It gets even crazier with the Anaglyph deck and Throwback Joker. I understand wanting to support all kinds of strategies, but I feel like playing the game should reward you more than not playing the game.
  • While I like standard and buffoon packs, I don't like how they dilute the pack selection. In the previous demo, you were reliably getting one tarot pack and one celestial pack. But here, those both feel rare. I've had games where I hold onto my Magic deck starting Fools for like five rounds because I haven't seen a single tarot pack.
  • Some of the new blinds are brutal in ways that feel annoying or unfair, where you can make a perfect deck, have a great set of jokers, and still lose because Celestial Bell keeps selecting the wrong card
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  • The "cash out" button appearing above your payout instead of below is weird. Your payout lines are printed from top to bottom and then it jumps back up to print the next hand button. Why?
  • Similarly, the Baseball Card joker's multiplier bounces around in weird ways that makes it hard to process what's happening
    And something I was hoping to see but didn't was a Joker that rewarded Stone cards. In the last demo, Stone cards were weird and awkward and I didn't know what to do with them. That's still true in this demo, unless I just haven't run into the right joker yet.
quaint dove
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I think the cash out being moved was to prevent it from softlocking the game when you have too many gain $15 when boss defeated tags, but not sure

potent fern
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I could believe that

novel warren
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The tags were buffed because 3 skips is basically +1 ante, so mst tags were never-take

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potent fern
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I figured they were buffed to make skipping a more viable option. I barely ever skipped blinds in the previous demo, so I get the logic from that side of things. But I wasn't just trying to optimize my routes - I avoided skipping blinds because I wanted to play the game.

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I'm also curious about the variance in skips. Let's say skipping ends up at 25%. Does that mean that players A, B, and C are each skipping 20-30% of the time? Or is Player A skipping 90% of the time and players B and C are skipping vastly less? The Anaglyph deck and Throwback Joker support skipping so much that I'd lean towards it being the second case

novel warren
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I think the hope is the first one, but yeah it's definitely the second right now

potent fern
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FWIW I'd rather skip about 0% of the time...

timber meteor
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I don't feel like the player is being over-rewarded for skipping. Most skip rewards are still bad deals in most situations.
My opinion is that some tags need a buff but I'm mostly ok with the current situation.

south sequoia
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I feel like a different game than September demo, which is awesome as the game still is too!
Feel like September meta was more about tarot, planets (enabling and buffing a particular hand type) and accumulating mult. January demo feels more like wacky jokers all over the place and how much the starting deck can impact your run, as Magic and Anaglyph both are really powerful but in different ways.

Talking about Anaglyph, tags are finally worth considering, with some I still never take, but others leading to crazy power spikes. I feel like Anaglyph as a whole is much of a gamble, as it can steamroll the game or end up with 5+ unused Double tags.

I was worried by Standard and Buffoon packs diluting packs, but they end up being as fun as Arcana, Celestial, and Spectral (though I sometimes miss the Telescope moment when you were upgrading your hand type each shop).

Jokers-wise;

  • The obvious ones I love are consumables creation (Vagabond, Superposition, Séance), enablers (Four Fingers, Shortcut, Credit Card), Brainstorm, Invisible, Hack
  • Those I was dubious about but came to love too are Trousers, Obelisk (had a hard time getting to understand how to properly use it), Fibonacci (which went from "meh, ok" to very good), Joka Cola, Flower Pot, Hologram (was unsure about diluting your deck at first), "when scored" effects (sinful jokers, Fibonacci again, did I say I love retrigger strats?)
  • Those I don't like that much; Banner (I'm a quite discard-intensive player), Fortune Teller (needs too much support to shine), Baseball and Throwback (too much incentives), Bull (let me spend my money)
  • Those I just don't like (sorry!) ; food jokers (I like when things are made to last), direct randomness (Michel, Misprint, Parking, unlucky fella here), Green Joker
  • The others I like, but not as much as the first quoted.
dapper niche
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Commenting just to be able to find this when I have time to write

boreal monolith
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I'll turn up the inactivity timer so this doesn't just disappear without warning

dapper niche
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ok, so my impressions:

  1. in the broad sense, I like the increase of sources of xMult. In the previous demo, the balance was really tilted toward "get a polychrome or a stencil or a constellation". But in this demo, the balance between chips/+Mult/xMult is such that sometimes you actually are better off with a chip joker than yet another xMult. Especially if you've gotten few planet cards so your main hand is coming out to like ... 60 chips, and then 80 mult and then x12 mult on top of that. Having +120 chips there is a very big buff.

  2. That said, the 2 new pack types feel like they've really diluted the shop in a way that I don't like. The lack of planet packs means I often end up just hoping that I'll run into the skip that levels up a hand and that it'll be the right hand (and, sometimes, it's not the right hand but I shift strategies -- I was going straight flush and then leveled up ordinary Straight something like 12 times one game.) I feel like the shop could use more pack slots to prevent "man I haven't seen a celestial pack in 3 antes" frustration, but not 3 packs every time. Maybe like the shop after each boss blind always has a third pack?

  3. Skip tags are so much more useful now. Some of them still kinda suck, but coupons and free buffoon packs (note: these appear to be MEGA buffoon packs but don't say it in the tag description) and other packs, especially with the glyph deck, are very strong. And guaranteed negative / polychrome / etc. jokers are fantastic.

  4. The new seals, tags, etc. are generally pretty fun. I'm having fun playing with different decks and different effects.

  5. I see a lot of potential synergies with stuff that was in the previous demo. Blueprint/DNA with a hologram ... especially if it's a card with a seal that can then be discarded for tarots or held for planets ...

overall I like the state of the game, just feel like the shop is a little too diluted rn

balmy creek