forest valve
the onboarding in this game could use some improvement in my opinion, a lot of both basic and deeper mechanics aren't really explained which, for a game as much a focus on keywords and synergistic interactions between cards as balatro, feels out of place. the game's tutorial gives a really basic overview of some mechanics, but it misses out on things like on trigger vs. joker scoring and enhancements vs. editions vs. seals. some of these things can be figured out naturally through playing it, but i know for me it took me help from a friend to understand both of these things properly, and i know how others have had difficulties with the difference between +mult and xmult.
one of the big ones that the game does explain but does so in a flawed way is how you can rearrange jokers, and this is for 2 reasons. 1, the game says that jokers activate in order, but it doesn't elaborate on when those activations take place, and seeing cards like gros michel, raised fist, and smiley face, which all seem similar unless you know what the keywords mean, activate in reverse order makes it feel much more confusing and can make reordering jokers feel redundant, at least it did for me on my first time around in the game. 2, the game never actually gives a reason to do that. very few jokers (and even less you'll have before unlocking more jokers) care about joker placement explicitly, and while there's some xmults (the main application of rearranging jokers) shown in the tutorial seed, but the earliest ones include ancient joker (on trigger xmult) and campfire (a notoriously hard joker to pilot for newer players especially) so it's easy to forget that such a mechanic even exists for many people.
so, how to remedy this problem without making the game super handholdy? my solution would be to add a collection-like unlock system where, upon finding certain kinds of jokers, adds a short entry in a menu which can be read at any time. (cont.)
silver canyon
edgy niche