(Concept) Jimbo the Hedgehog

[ashen frigate]

An idea for a Sonic the Hedgehog themed joker pack intended to be as balanced as possible with the vanilla experience with zero flaws, possibly with a unique deck or two (also I’ve never programmed anything before so take this whole thing with a grain of salt)

Jokers (WIP):
||Sonic the Hedgehog: 0.7x (for example) mult for every 1x game speed||
||Tails “Miles” Prower: +3 chips every mile blind icon is dragged [1:1000 scale] (haven’t actually calculated that one yet lol)||
||Knuckles the Echidna:|| TBD
||Eggman: gives 5 mult for every egg you have. Eggs are 20x as likely to appear in the shop and are negative||
||Big the Cat: 1x mult, increases based on card size, card size increases by 0.4x per round||
||Charmy the Bee: +20 mult, changes all SFX to Sonic Heroes voice clips||
||Yellow Drill: +75 chips, changes song to Yellow Drill theme||
||Omochao: 3x mult, makes tutorial dialogue appear periodically||
||Bingo Highway: if a playable hand of 5 cards is drawn at the start of a round, automatically play that hand for free||
||Motobug: copies a card to the left or right (a weaker but more common blueprint, might change this a little for balancing)(credit to Marie for the card idea)||
||Casino Nights Barrel: initially does nothing. Must push up and down rhythmically to move the card off-screen, when it comes back will have a random modifier (chips, mult, xmult, nothing) that the card will have for the rest of the round (card sprite will change to show effect) (who knows if this one’s even possible to program in lol)||
||Michael Jackson:|| TBD
||Maria: 10x mult, cannot draw more cards, perishes after 1 hand and you still can’t draw more cards until the round is over||
||Chao: +10 mult, grows depending on your actions (WIP)||

This idea comes primarily from a joker idea I had for Sonic where it’s “0.7x (for example) mult for every 1x game speed”

So the faster your game is, the more mult you get lol

I’m not sure yet what I’d do for other jokers

Oh hi parchment lol

[obtuse citrus]

Hi lol

I am a little concerned about that effect, kinda because there is another mod out there that adds additional game speed options, so having the cap be x4 without that mod and x999 with that mod feels a little odd

[ashen frigate]

Yeah but that’s peak comedy

[obtuse citrus]

(plus I'm not so sure about tying accessibility settings to game mechanics like this)

I think it's a very funny idea, but probably not a very serious or balanced one. If you keep that kind of energy up for a few more jokers I'd love to see what you come up with!

[ashen frigate]

Fair enough

I could just make this mod absolutely bonkers if I wanted to

…I’ve never actually modded anything before though

But hey this could be a great place to start!

Oh I could just cap that joker at 4x speed

If I take the balanced approach

Tails is an inventor, so maybe at the start of a round he could create a temporary random joker/two jokers that override joker space and go away at the end of the round

Maybe gamma could target 3 random cards in your hand and those cards give an extra 1.5x mult when scored

Oh you know what would be funny (this would never work in a million years)

Tails “miles” prower, right

Gives +3 mult for every mile travelled during this game

Eggman: gives 5 mult for every egg you have. Eggs are 5x as likely to appear in the shop and are negative

Ok I think I like taking the stupid comedy angle with this mod lol

Awwww I thought omega/gamma had an “e” in his code name, I was about to make people play a Doom level for mult

WAIT

+1 mult for every (unit of measurement) the blind icon has been dragged

Idk which character that would go on though

[obtuse citrus]

You can drag Blind icons??

[ashen frigate]

Yeah lol

It’s always fun to find out something about your favourite games dozens of hours in lol

Big the Cat: 1x mult, increases based on card size, card size increases by 0.2x per round

Idk if half of this stuff is even possible I’m just having fun brainstorming rn

Alright, pretty fun variety so far

I think I’ll call it there for now, if anyone has suggestions or want to help somehow then go for it

[ashen frigate]

You know what I might do this anyways

Maybe for shadow

I know a guy who could help me make that work potentially

Or maybe shadow could be +chips the darker your screen is set to be

Or if reduced motion is turned on (chaos control)

I still have no idea what to do with knuckles

[ashen frigate]

Ok I think I got it

Screen brightness on shadow, the doom thing on fang the sniper, and maria (only shows up if you have fang) gives chips every time you take damage in fang’s card

[ashen frigate]

Charmy the Bee: +20 mult, changes all SFX to Sonic Heroes voice clips

Yellow Drill: +75 chips, changes song to Yellow Drill theme

So basically I’m just making a list of things that I think are funny and not worrying about if they’re actually possible until later

[ashen frigate]

Omochao: 3x mult, makes tutorial dialogue appear periodically

Day 2 of having zero clue what to do to knuckles

[ashen frigate]

Day 3 of having zero clue what to do with knuckles

Huh, I just realized I could include items, zones, and games if I think of an interesting enough idea for one

Like what if I just slapped the barrel from casino nights zone on a card and called it a day

Actually anything from the casino themed sonic stages would fit pretty well

Ooh wait

Bingo highway

Maybe I can do something related to straights with that

Or what if I just give the player a bingo board

…I need to be careful I’m not making things too gimmicky though, there’s a point where that stops being funny and just becomes annoying I think

But what if annoying IS funny

Hmm

Maybe I just keep the casino nights barrel and have that be the one balanced card because the extremely specific call-out is funny in and of itself

Ok wait

Hear me out

Michael Jackson

Ooh I have an idea for metal sonic

Metal sonic is just sonic but worse, right

Idk if Balatro has a limit for how long joker descriptions can be, I’m banking on the answer being no

I make metal sonic’s text description include several bits of binary that you have to decode to get the full description

Something like “gains (binary) for every (binary)”

Might alter that to make it as long as possible

Ideally it’s so long you literally have to go into the files to get the full text string

And then you finally get it after all that and it’s just sonic’s description but it doesn’t actually do anything (gain 5x mult for every 99999x game speed) (or something like that)

So people either brute force it trying to figure out what it does and it never happens, or they waste like an hour deciphering it just to get a slap in the face

[ashen frigate]

Day 4 of having zero clue what to do with knuckles

I did have another idea for a joker but I don’t think it really fits with this mod in particular

I’ll write it down here anyways I guess in case I think of a way to make it fit in here

Raging Demon: gives 5x mult when combo is 50 or more (combo being every thing activated in a single hand. This includes chips for cards, joker activations, retriggers, cash gain, etc. basically anything that makes a little graphic appear showing what’s happening)

[vast oriole]

no

metal sonic should be like blueprint

i'd make it uncommon and have it copy the joker to either the left or the right changing when a hand is played and not showing which one it's on (if it's on the edge then it can choose the empty side)

a more common but less reliable blueprint

[ashen frigate]

That’s a solid idea if I was making a balanced mod, but the point is that everything is a joke, meant to be a novelty more than a fun game mechanic. I try to keep things interesting and varied and have some semblance of game design, but at the end of the day this is all an elaborate joke with way too much effort put in. Sorry to disappoint

Maybe someday if I finish this mod I’ll come back and make balanced versions of all the jokers, but for now it’s all about the (hopefully actually funny) comedy factor

I do appreciate the suggestion though I’ll keep it in mind for the future

Like some stuff in here is just to be silly, but out of a bunch of dumb ideas can sometimes come something cool

Conceptually speaking I unironically think that the effects on sonic and eggman go pretty hard. The fact that they’re also pretty funny is a nice bonus

Now all of that said, I could slap metal sonic’s effect on a motobug or something and then reserve metal sonic for something cooler. We’ll see

I genuinely do like the idea of a worse blueprint that’s more common though, that’s really cool. It just doesn’t fit with this mod rn

Sorry I’m rambling too much here

…hm, maybe I could do a mix of unbalanced jokes and serious cards, then I could actually include that suggestion

Also

Bingo Highway: if a playable hand of 5 cards is drawn at the start of a round, automatically play that hand for free

[ashen frigate]

I thought of something that could be a tarot card but idk what effect it would have

Hang Castle as a tarot card because it’s whole gimmick is that it flips upside down sometimes

(The sonic heroes bias is wild)

I was also thinking I might have to rethink some card effects because if you’re willing to put up with some annoying gimmicks they’re just free points lol

[ashen frigate]

Maria: 10x mult, cannot draw more cards, perishes after 1 hand and you still can’t draw more cards until the round is over

[ashen frigate]

Day 5ish if not knowing what to do with knuckles

[ashen frigate]

No ideas in particular today

[ashen frigate]

Ok so like what if there were special stages

I’m not claiming I’m capable of making that happen but like hypothetically

What would those look like and what effect would it have

And how would you get to it

[vast oriole]

beat a boss blind on an even numbered ante by 2x or more

[ashen frigate]

Maybe have a quick hit of blackjack in the middle of a run or something

[vast oriole]

next big blind becomes the special stage

[ashen frigate]

Ooh I like the idea of replacing the boss blind

Although usually in sonic games the special stages happen without shortening the normal game, but idk if there’s an easy way of doing that

Replacing the boss blind is probably the simplest solution here

I’m not sure I like the 2x score thing though. With a good run you’d be replacing every boss with a special. You need to go out of your way for special stages usually, either by being creative and finding secrets or by getting through some hard route. Something more like a list of optional tasks that you need to clear in the small and big blinds could be more like it

[vast oriole]

increase the score requirement each time you succeed

[ashen frigate]

That could also work

Now ok, there’s not a very high chance I do this because this is very ambitious and I probably don’t actually have the skill for programming all this, but I do want to share the vision I guess

I think I have an idea for (probably) the ideal sonic themed mod

[ashen frigate]

First of all, I’d have it so that the currency system is overhauled a bit. It would be reliant on rings instead of dollars, and you’d get rings based on your ranking (letter grades) in a round. Your rank is determined by things like how fast you cleared the round (real time), how many hands it took, how many discards and hands are remaining, and how many special stage tasks were finished. Your rings can be used in the shop, but they also help keep your run from ending. Rather than losing the run instantly, you’d lose some number of rings (idk how many it would be) and the point requirements for the blinds would go down (without actually lowering the blind count). The number of rings lost would increase as you get further in the run. You’d have a list of 3 special stage tasks available at all times. Completing all 3 special stage tasks (remaining tasks can be rerolled with rings) will give you a special stage that can give a variety of rewards, as well as chaos emeralds. The special stage(s) would be designed to take up only a few seconds of a run, being something like a single hand of blackjack, or 3 spins of a slot machine. Winning at all would net you a chaos emerald. Rewards in the special stage, dependent on how well you do, would range from consumables, to jokers, to card editions, to rings, or other things. Earning all 7 chaos emeralds earns you super sonic mode, which does… something. Idk what effect it would have exactly, but it would be very overpowered and would require at least 50 rings to use and would spend 1 ring every second.

All of that, especially speed being rewarded, would hopefully make it feel more sonic-y

Again, idk if I’m actually capable of any of that, but I just wanted to put my ideas out there as a sort of roadmap if I can actually do it

Also

Chao: +10 mult, grows depending on your actions

I’m not sure what the other chaos will do or how they’ll grow yet, but I do like this idea

Ooh what if wisps were consumables

…nah I’ve got no ideas for consumable effects

Maybe id just reskin the existing ones

[ashen frigate]

Day 6 of having no clue what to do with knuckles

[ashen frigate]

…man I get the feeling I’m going to finally have a chance to try programming some of these ideas and then I’m gonna be absolute trash at programming

Ah well I won’t know until I try it

[ashen frigate]

Knuckles still eludes me

[ashen frigate]

Wild idea that would be nearly impossible to program in

That ambitious idea of making the game speedy, what if there were new cards to go with it

What if you had an extra deck of abilities based on sonic battle moves and items across the series that you can activate with hotkeys to influence the cards, with more abilities immediately being drawn after use without using a hand

Like the cards wouldn’t be that strong but they could help you go through the blind faster

You know what what if game over via hands were removed entirely and it was just based on how fast you get through everything

Or maybe hands could cost rings every time they’re played

Idk

All these ideas are cool but they’re honestly getting WAAAAAAYYYYY outside the scope of what I’m capable of

I’ll probably start simple by trying to make a couple jokers and expand from there if I get that far

Oh also if it ever becomes possible to change backgrounds I’m totally making them images of different zones