Hmmmm, guess I'm gonna have to look into this Bagalago. Sounds fun, and I LOVE the name! Truth be told, I wasn't really interested until Greg described it as, "A love letter to American card culture." That guy has a way with words! 👍👍👍💯💯💯❤❤❤️
This isn’t China and opium, Jesus Christ. Or China and tobacco. Phillip Morris could kill every Chinese person on earth by simply increasing the tar content of Marlboro reds. So no. Americanacore is abstinence and temperance. Clown.
Part of the fun is knowing the Joker references and how they tie into the mechanics of the game. Like how Gros Michel is a species of banana that was susceptible to a fungus that made the species unsustainable and growers switched to the Cavendish. Which is why there's a 1 in 6 chance Gros Michel goes extinct and why it's the only way you can find a Cavendish later, which has a better effect and a lower chance of going extinct.
Or the mentioned Hanging Chad joker, which causes the first played card to be recounted twice specifically. Much like the 2000 election ballots, which were first recounted automatically before the eventual manual recount.
totally. - driver's license requiring 16 enhanced cards like the age requirement of 16 for a driver's license in the US - Baseball card specifically powering up based on how many other uncommon jokers you have (how good of a collector you are) - Red card rewards you for skipping a booster pack ("ejecting" instead of accepting those cards) - Mail-in Rebate pays for specific discards (rebates always have conditions) - Credit card being a way to get into Debt in Balatro... - Card Sharp benefitting on repeat hands (because he's playing the table) I really enjoyed this video, but I feel like JJ missed something by neglecting the mechanics and how they affect the game. It's all part of the design and what makes Balatro so fun. It showcases the amount of thought that went into creating this game which feels so cohesive and well designed.
@@JJMcCullough the first time one of my favorite youtubers responds to me is with a passive aggressive answer 😭😭. I won't sleep tonight thinking you hate me JJ🥺
@@JJMcCullough Thank you! Great video, learned a lot more than I was expecting to especially about the general history of playing cards. The origins of the back design of playing cards was a really nice touch and a design I know I took for granted.
Some cool details JJ missed: The hanging chad joker causes the first card played to be scored again (i.e. recounted) twice. The trading card joker removes a card and gives you cash, similarly to how one might sell cards from a booster pack at a card shop. The mail-in rebate gives you money for discarding (i.e. returning) certain hands. The baseball card rewards you for holding many uncommon and thus valuable jokers. The driver's license requires at least 16 enhanced cards for its effect, referencing a common minimum age for obtain a real one.
I like the blanket term of "Americanacore" to describe a lot of the indie game scenes recent manifestations, including mascot horror, surreally rustic point n' click games, strange and edgy reimagining's of various mundane pastimes, activities and occupations one inevitably associates with the USA. Your talent for concocting a useful cultural appellation I'll be adding to my vocabulary has been demonstrated yet again J.J. :3 JREG, "Beloved children's entertainer"... xD
It’s fun how the mechanics of the Jokers also reflect their design. For example you have to have 16 enhanced cards in your deck to activate the 3x multiplier Driver’s licence gives you since 16 is when you get your licence in the US (I’m glad they didn’t localize that for us Europeans and change it to 18).
Hey JJ, great vid as usual. Had a few thoughts I think may interest you. UFO50 - love letter to the early development of video games by mimicking a company's game catalogue over the course of the 1980s -- it's an anthology that has 50 fully thought out games, most of which are tropes on game styles but all have innovative twists that make them really enjoyable for the modern age Red Dead Redemption (1&2) and Grand Theft Auto series -- both arguable commentaries on the wild west and modern America, made by the same company Papers, Please -- you play the role of border guard of a fictional soviet-era country ... I can think of many more, depending on the nature of the topic you're looking to delve into. Also worth checking out is the board game Twilight Struggle -- you basically replay the cold war using historical events for tactical gameplay (2 player, one is Russia other is USA).
Honestly, most regular bookstores will have a "woo-woo" section these days, with card packs and related books. They usually don't have crystals and sage, so you gotta know a guy.
I think the iconography is really important for the reception of the game. Playing cards have been around for a lot longer than the usual adventure style game, so a broader audience of people are able to parse what's going on, and most already know how to make poker hands going in. Solitare has always been the go-to game for bored office workers of all ages for this reason I think.
It's really its own aesthetic. Poker cards, chess, checkers, backgammon - all invoke a certain "game as game itself" type feeling. It is culturally acceptable to enjoy these, and they may even feel "dignified" or "less childish". They don't need a story, theme or lore - they are just games being games. And at the same time, the games themselves are abstractions, long removed from their source: chess being a war fought between two monarchies; poker cards using everyday objects of old like spears and clubs, abstract beyond recognition. It's a weird space in our culture, for sure.
I recently just found a bunch of vintage baseball cards from the early 1960s, and I thought to myself, "There's something inherently American about these cards." Lo and behold, J.J. comes in THE SAME WEEK I find these cards and has an entire video prepared on American card culture and Balatro. Go figure!
8:44 actually the main reason we moved to foil packs from wax packs wasn't because of the technology, but was a way to keep people from peeking into the packs themselves so they'd know which ones had high value cards Im fairly certain Magic The Gathering 4th edition was the first time that was done
14:33. That references a specific Poker Pro named Phil Laak who is nicknamed The Unibomber because he dresses that way. (The first to get famous for doing that). He is also more famous because of his longtime girlfriend, actress Jennifer Tilly from the Chucky series. She became a professional poker player like many Hollywood stars have tried to do during the Poker Boom.
I like how JREG is referred to as "everyone's favorite" in the description, very sweet of you. When I got to the Arcana section, I was expecting Taboo: The Sixth Sense to get a passing mention, since it's practically bathed in and dripping with mysticism on every aspect of its visual presentation, was quite famous for that in the early 00s. Well, that, and it was lumped in with the likes of Polybius and LSD: Dream Emulator, heralded as a possible genuine tool for fortune telling, such simple times those were As per suggestions, there's no way FNaF isn't already on your list, especially given that bit of b-roll at the start. Hope you do cover it sometime, you'd offer an interesting perspective
Omg the phrasing on the driver's license piece had me thinking JJ had turned into a sovereign citizen and I had to rewind it twice: 'South Dakota was the last state to require drivers have licenses and Tennessee was the last state to require licenses have pictures on them'
So did you initially interpret the statement "the last state to require a driver's licence" to mean "the final hold-out state to give up requiring licences, and so, no state requires a licence anymore" instead of "the final hold-out state to adopt requiring licences, since every other state had already started using them."?
@@TurtleMarcus yes, it was just me not fully paying attention really and then rewinding to just the same phrase a couple times. But I think it's funny that the phrasing can in theory mean opposite things.
JJ! You should totally do a 35 Tribes of 19th Century/Victorian Canada. You've spoken a lot about how Showa and Victorian era culture has influenced modern sensibilities but there's a real gap for a broad overview of the time's political culture
Fun fact, the old Bicycle card factory in Cincinnati was recently turned into a mixed use development that’s themed to playing cards. This should also enter into another entry in your city is not unique series as I believe it’s common for a beloved but obsolete industrial building to be turned into a hip commercial property the continent over.
An interesting video topic might be the stereotypical stage magician(top hat, white capped wand, rabbits out of hats). Stage magic is still popular but magicians don't really look like that anymore, and you see this stock magical character shows up in a ton of movies and video games and cartoons.
you should check out Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, it’s like Balatro but for Blackjack! also uses a bunch of “cards”, credit card, returning customer card, etc
20:51 did you have to mix that guttural sound with the brown portrusions? Your seeming intent of a branching tree gives a simultaneous different association
Great video as always. I don't think the art decisions were made as a celebration of american culture or show that Canadian culture is exactly the same as to America but rather as a marketing strategy to capture the American market. It's usually the go to strategy if you want to get funding to make games.
He described rogue-likes in a wrong way. "There is no grinding to be done" - There is, grinding playthroughs is a key feature. You get to retain/level up/improve/unlock/progress in some way in a rogue-like that makes your next run more interesting. A rogue-like is quite intentionally NOT like an arcade game. The whole point is that it is not reset to a completely blank slate at the end.
I want to mention something I noticed related to the standard deck! Every 52-card deck I've seen has three face cards displayed in profile; that is, their faces are depicted in a way that only one eye is showing. These are the King of diamonds, the Jack of hearts, and the Jack of spades. There are other common card conventions as well, such as the King of hearts holding a sword to his head, or the Queen of spades holding a scepter. Balatro doesn't follow most of these conventions. There are three cards shown in profile, but they're not the correct ones (King of hearts, Jacks of clubs and diamonds). Most royalty is depicted holding either a scepter, sword, or flower whether or not they also hold those items in real decks. There is one convention that is followed, however, which is that the King of diamonds is holding an axe. He's the only royalty shown to be doing this. Is this a happy coincidence, or a small attention to detail by the artist?
JJ and Jreg is like Batman and Robin, but like, Joseph Gordon-Levitt Robin with Adam West Batman. (this comment is explicitly _not_ a love letter to American comic culture)
it could be a reference I am just not getting, but Localthunk, the only developer of Balatro, likes to stay very anonymous online, so the still shot at 1:17 if you did somehow get his name would be very disrespectful, again maybe its just a joke I am not understanding
I have a strange feeling this might actually be his name, based on a Canadian federal website listing for a company I found by searching for 'localthunk' and the name listed here. And yes, that absolutely should not be in this video.
Again, assuming this is right, I find nothing searching 'balatro' plus the name, and find that one website searching 'localthunk' plus the name. This is very much not public information. Great, I hate being cursed with knowledge...
I think that the description Jreg gave of Roguelikes is a little misleading. With how he worded it, almost any game that forces you back to the beginning when you fail would be a Roguelike (Super Mario Bros. for instance). The key element that makes Balatro a Roguelike is that when you first start there are cards that need to be unlocked in order for them to potentially come into play and those cards stay unlocked in subsequent playthroughs.
I am an American, Michigan specifically. Here, Americans mostly see Canadians, as Americans with a different name. If Canada was ever invaded, we would react like they invaded the USA itself. The tie is very close.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Hmmmm, guess I'm gonna have to look into this Bagalago. Sounds fun, and I LOVE the name! Truth be told, I wasn't really interested until Greg described it as, "A love letter to American card culture." That guy has a way with words! 👍👍👍💯💯💯❤❤❤️
Great video JJ did you enjoy playing it? Playing the video game? You know, the game that this video is about? Did you like playing it?
I'm not on trial here.
@@JJMcCulloughI find you guilty of not being on trial.
He must have
@@JJMcCullough that's what they all say before their life sentence
@@JJMcCullough Don't get flush, JJ. Tell it to us straight.
Holy hell if it's reached JJ Balatro really has taken off
Speaking of taking off, it’s been great seeing your channel grow so rapidly in the past week
@@russiancamel3365 I appreciate it friend
Why are you asking like he isn't very much interested in pop culture?????
The Js in JJ Balatro are short for Joker.
I love how Jreg has become the youth correspondent for this channel like how Pete Davidson was on SNL years ago.
funny thing how JREG left hight school a decade ago tho,
this is the sort of position ones bound to age out of pretty quickly
Oh. So that's why you were asking JREG about Balagago.
That kid knows his ‘lago (cool slang for the game)
I wish I could watch JJ/s new video but I don't want to pay the 25% tariff.
Too soon.
@@JJMcCulloughYou're right, it is too soon since the tariffs have been pushed back to Tuesday
Balatro contains the most pertinent americanacore aspect, addiction
This isn’t China and opium, Jesus Christ. Or China and tobacco.
Phillip Morris could kill every Chinese person on earth by simply increasing the tar content of Marlboro reds.
So no. Americanacore is abstinence and temperance. Clown.
4:03 "No, you would say that." I sprayed tea on my screen.
Balatro really is one of the more contrived excuses to talk about "card culture" - but if the shoe fits 🤷♂️
5:06 "So as Greg very explicitly said, Balatro is very much a love letter to American card culture"
😂
Part of the fun is knowing the Joker references and how they tie into the mechanics of the game. Like how Gros Michel is a species of banana that was susceptible to a fungus that made the species unsustainable and growers switched to the Cavendish. Which is why there's a 1 in 6 chance Gros Michel goes extinct and why it's the only way you can find a Cavendish later, which has a better effect and a lower chance of going extinct.
Or the mentioned Hanging Chad joker, which causes the first played card to be recounted twice specifically. Much like the 2000 election ballots, which were first recounted automatically before the eventual manual recount.
totally.
- driver's license requiring 16 enhanced cards like the age requirement of 16 for a driver's license in the US
- Baseball card specifically powering up based on how many other uncommon jokers you have (how good of a collector you are)
- Red card rewards you for skipping a booster pack ("ejecting" instead of accepting those cards)
- Mail-in Rebate pays for specific discards (rebates always have conditions)
- Credit card being a way to get into Debt in Balatro...
- Card Sharp benefitting on repeat hands (because he's playing the table)
I really enjoyed this video, but I feel like JJ missed something by neglecting the mechanics and how they affect the game. It's all part of the design and what makes Balatro so fun. It showcases the amount of thought that went into creating this game which feels so cohesive and well designed.
The US-Canada relationship literally being at the lowest points in recent history.
JJ: "Lemme tell ya abut these cool cards"
At least this helps with morale.
yes if there's one thing I am guilty of it's never making videos about US-Canada relations.
The sun doesn't shine every day. The relationship may be really bad in the moment, but they may get better. Or worse, who knows...
@@JJMcCullough the first time one of my favorite youtubers responds to me is with a passive aggressive answer 😭😭. I won't sleep tonight thinking you hate me JJ🥺
this feels like the ultimate reward for getting gold stake on all jokers a few days ago, thanks jj
I don’t know what that means but I’ll take it!
@@JJMcCulloughbasically the most difficult and time consuming achievement in the game 👍
@@BeatingBros Wow congratulations!
@@JJMcCullough Thank you! Great video, learned a lot more than I was expecting to especially about the general history of playing cards. The origins of the back design of playing cards was a really nice touch and a design I know I took for granted.
Some cool details JJ missed:
The hanging chad joker causes the first card played to be scored again (i.e. recounted) twice.
The trading card joker removes a card and gives you cash, similarly to how one might sell cards from a booster pack at a card shop.
The mail-in rebate gives you money for discarding (i.e. returning) certain hands.
The baseball card rewards you for holding many uncommon and thus valuable jokers.
The driver's license requires at least 16 enhanced cards for its effect, referencing a common minimum age for obtain a real one.
@@martins.4423 The red card rewards you for skipping booster packs, like when you throw out a bad player in soccer
"Would you say it's a love letter to American card culture?"
"No. You would say that. So I explicitly would not say that."
Damn, he IS a zoomer.
13:39 I mean, you really didn’t have to say “British man” when you were just going to show the most *british man* I’ve ever seen in my life.
I had no idea red cards weren’t introduced to association football until this late. I can only imagine how chaotic World Cups used to be.
I LOVE YOU JJ THANK YOU FOR COVERING MY FAVORITE GAME OF THE YEAR I AM LITERALLY PLAYING RN
AND shaking??
my game of the year discussed on my favourite channel? We truly are blessed
I like the blanket term of "Americanacore" to describe a lot of the indie game scenes recent manifestations, including mascot horror, surreally rustic point n' click games, strange and edgy reimagining's of various mundane pastimes, activities and occupations one inevitably associates with the USA. Your talent for concocting a useful cultural appellation I'll be adding to my vocabulary has been demonstrated yet again J.J. :3
JREG, "Beloved children's entertainer"... xD
It’s fun how the mechanics of the Jokers also reflect their design. For example you have to have 16 enhanced cards in your deck to activate the 3x multiplier Driver’s licence gives you since 16 is when you get your licence in the US (I’m glad they didn’t localize that for us Europeans and change it to 18).
I remember the Jreg tweet abt this
Can't wait until 10years from now when Jreg needs to find an even younger friend to explain culture to him so that he broken telephone it up to JJ
A fun little fact that I'm not sure if you know... Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, is the Great-Great Grandson of James Garfield.
Oh wow. What about the comic strip cat Garfield?
@JJMcCullough He would be the great grandfather, so right in the middle of the bloodline, basically.
This video feels like clicking every hperlink in a Wikipedia article
As much as I hate Wikipedia, I'll allow it.
Hey JJ, great vid as usual. Had a few thoughts I think may interest you.
UFO50 - love letter to the early development of video games by mimicking a company's game catalogue over the course of the 1980s -- it's an anthology that has 50 fully thought out games, most of which are tropes on game styles but all have innovative twists that make them really enjoyable for the modern age
Red Dead Redemption (1&2) and Grand Theft Auto series -- both arguable commentaries on the wild west and modern America, made by the same company
Papers, Please -- you play the role of border guard of a fictional soviet-era country
... I can think of many more, depending on the nature of the topic you're looking to delve into.
Also worth checking out is the board game Twilight Struggle -- you basically replay the cold war using historical events for tactical gameplay (2 player, one is Russia other is USA).
Gotta find one of these local “woo-woo” stores you mention
Honestly, most regular bookstores will have a "woo-woo" section these days, with card packs and related books. They usually don't have crystals and sage, so you gotta know a guy.
19:28 When I played LA Noire for the first time, I was genuinely surprised to see the driver's licenses in-game that didn't have a photo on them
23:03 The one and only time cards have predicted the future accurately🤣
I think the iconography is really important for the reception of the game. Playing cards have been around for a lot longer than the usual adventure style game, so a broader audience of people are able to parse what's going on, and most already know how to make poker hands going in. Solitare has always been the go-to game for bored office workers of all ages for this reason I think.
It's really its own aesthetic. Poker cards, chess, checkers, backgammon - all invoke a certain "game as game itself" type feeling. It is culturally acceptable to enjoy these, and they may even feel "dignified" or "less childish". They don't need a story, theme or lore - they are just games being games. And at the same time, the games themselves are abstractions, long removed from their source: chess being a war fought between two monarchies; poker cards using everyday objects of old like spears and clubs, abstract beyond recognition. It's a weird space in our culture, for sure.
I recently just found a bunch of vintage baseball cards from the early 1960s, and I thought to myself, "There's something inherently American about these cards." Lo and behold, J.J. comes in THE SAME WEEK I find these cards and has an entire video prepared on American card culture and Balatro. Go figure!
Jimbo Joker McCullough
I am playing Balatro while watching your video about Balatro.
JJ i love this game. Im so happy you made a video on this.
5:05 Noticed that Jreg is dressed like the Balatro home screen. Impressive dedication to detail!
This is the closest we will ever get to a JJ and Northernlion crossover.
Good to see JJ keeping in touch with the youths. Been loving the «tent» for years now🇺🇸🇨🇦
The JJ viewer in my brain tells me to take a walk outside while the Jreg viewer in my mind tells me to write Greg x JJ BL fanfic
Lmfao "you would say that, tho" 😂
Idk why, but I know these are my people. I feel at home here. Thanks, guys.
I absolutely LOVE this game! My #1 game is Civilization 5 with literally 1000+ hours of play time, but Balatro is #2 with 450 hours.
My Balatro addiction has been at an all time high so this is a perfect video for this week.
I watched your video on playing cards around the world literally last night, great timing lol
I’ve been waiting for this video after I saw Greg’s tweet of you calling it bagalago
I played it as a minigame in Dave the Diver, had no clue it was a whole game on it's own.
A very interesting video as always JJ, thank you for your incredible work detailing the history of so many things we take for granted here!
The address on the Mail-in Rebate is an actual address in New York. Specifically, it's the apartment where Jerry lived in the show Seinfeld.
You know what triggers my OCD, the normal speed on the balatro clips. WHY IS IT SO SLOW
For the first time in forever. You uploaded on Saturday!
Perfect timing. I just got addicted to this game lol
This is the last video I expected you to make but I’m not complaining
Just sat down with a honeycomb cheesecake after a death metal gig, your video couldn’t have come at a better time
first time i’ve ever heard of balatro
It's really interesting that this was nominated for game of the year.
8:44 actually the main reason we moved to foil packs from wax packs wasn't because of the technology, but was a way to keep people from peeking into the packs themselves so they'd know which ones had high value cards
Im fairly certain Magic The Gathering 4th edition was the first time that was done
Yooooo I love Balala
18:45 Awh man what a good time this was. I'd take this drama over the current drama quick fast in a hurry.
JJ is slowly turning Greg into a respectable adult.
What a sellout!
14:33. That references a specific Poker Pro named Phil Laak who is nicknamed The Unibomber because he dresses that way. (The first to get famous for doing that). He is also more famous because of his longtime girlfriend, actress Jennifer Tilly from the Chucky series. She became a professional poker player like many Hollywood stars have tried to do during the Poker Boom.
Wasn't expecting this one
I feel like it would have been interesting if he also talked about how the different references are reflected in the effects each card has.
I like how JREG is referred to as "everyone's favorite" in the description, very sweet of you. When I got to the Arcana section, I was expecting Taboo: The Sixth Sense
to get a passing mention, since it's practically bathed in and dripping with mysticism on every aspect of its visual presentation, was quite famous for that in the early 00s.
Well, that, and it was lumped in with the likes of Polybius and LSD: Dream Emulator, heralded as a possible genuine tool for fortune telling, such simple times those were
As per suggestions, there's no way FNaF isn't already on your list, especially given that bit of b-roll at the start. Hope you do cover it sometime, you'd offer an interesting perspective
They were beating your ass on Twitter for asking Jreg about "Bagalago" without actually playing it.
I have no intent of playing the game
@@JJMcCullough I respect the dedication to being a boomer.
Beloved children’s entertainer
5:27 “a video I made quite a while ago” all the way back in the year 202.
Omg the phrasing on the driver's license piece had me thinking JJ had turned into a sovereign citizen and I had to rewind it twice:
'South Dakota was the last state to require drivers have licenses and Tennessee was the last state to require licenses have pictures on them'
huh?
So did you initially interpret the statement "the last state to require a driver's licence" to mean "the final hold-out state to give up requiring licences, and so, no state requires a licence anymore" instead of "the final hold-out state to adopt requiring licences, since every other state had already started using them."?
@@TurtleMarcus yes, it was just me not fully paying attention really and then rewinding to just the same phrase a couple times.
But I think it's funny that the phrasing can in theory mean opposite things.
@ I also found JJ's phrasing ambiguous, and that is interesting.
We love the explainer videos, JJ!
Got the notif for this video while I was playing Balatro, hahaha
"Sunny Winnepeg" made me chuckle.
With the state of things rn this is exactly what I need. Never miss a j video 🙏
JJ* lol sorry
JJ! You should totally do a 35 Tribes of 19th Century/Victorian Canada. You've spoken a lot about how Showa and Victorian era culture has influenced modern sensibilities but there's a real gap for a broad overview of the time's political culture
5:00 I thought JJ was about to hit Jreg with the "Thanks Jreg, you've given me a lot to think about."
Fun fact, the old Bicycle card factory in Cincinnati was recently turned into a mixed use development that’s themed to playing cards. This should also enter into another entry in your city is not unique series as I believe it’s common for a beloved but obsolete industrial building to be turned into a hip commercial property the continent over.
Ooh that’s pretty cool. I have been wanting to visit Ohio.
5:28 Damn JJ’s been making videos since the 3rd century!
An interesting video topic might be the stereotypical stage magician(top hat, white capped wand, rabbits out of hats). Stage magic is still popular but magicians don't really look like that anymore, and you see this stock magical character shows up in a ton of movies and video games and cartoons.
Greg “jreg” Guevara
Beloved children’s entertainer 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
you should check out Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, it’s like Balatro but for Blackjack! also uses a bunch of “cards”, credit card, returning customer card, etc
20:51 did you have to mix that guttural sound with the brown portrusions? Your seeming intent of a branching tree gives a simultaneous different association
Don't let this distract you from the fact JJ got shoulder length hair before playing a new video game
I always knew you were a big Balatro head JJ! Just the vibe
JJ uploads, I click
I needed this kind of video
My son plays all those games. He introduced me to Balatro and I love it! 1:17
brick by brick we inch closer to the NL and J.J collab, the vancouriest collab ever seen in this platform
A vancouvery collab? Nay, the vancoumost!
The crossover I never knew I always needed
Great video as always.
I don't think the art decisions were made as a celebration of american culture or show that Canadian culture is exactly the same as to America but rather as a marketing strategy to capture the American market.
It's usually the go to strategy if you want to get funding to make games.
JJ making a video about balatro is one of those things you never consider despite it being so perfect
This video is a disaster, I’m off games for life.
JJ "Lover of Niche, Hyperspecific Zoomer Aesthetics" McCullough coins the term Americanacore for a niche, hyperspecific zoomer aesthetic.
He described rogue-likes in a wrong way. "There is no grinding to be done" - There is, grinding playthroughs is a key feature. You get to retain/level up/improve/unlock/progress in some way in a rogue-like that makes your next run more interesting. A rogue-like is quite intentionally NOT like an arcade game. The whole point is that it is not reset to a completely blank slate at the end.
Literally got the notification for this while playing balatro
I want to mention something I noticed related to the standard deck!
Every 52-card deck I've seen has three face cards displayed in profile; that is, their faces are depicted in a way that only one eye is showing. These are the King of diamonds, the Jack of hearts, and the Jack of spades. There are other common card conventions as well, such as the King of hearts holding a sword to his head, or the Queen of spades holding a scepter.
Balatro doesn't follow most of these conventions. There are three cards shown in profile, but they're not the correct ones (King of hearts, Jacks of clubs and diamonds). Most royalty is depicted holding either a scepter, sword, or flower whether or not they also hold those items in real decks.
There is one convention that is followed, however, which is that the King of diamonds is holding an axe. He's the only royalty shown to be doing this. Is this a happy coincidence, or a small attention to detail by the artist?
JJ and Jreg is like Batman and Robin, but like, Joseph Gordon-Levitt Robin with Adam West Batman.
(this comment is explicitly _not_ a love letter to American comic culture)
now if this doesn't get you to 1 mil idk what will!
it could be a reference I am just not getting, but Localthunk, the only developer of Balatro, likes to stay very anonymous online, so the still shot at 1:17 if you did somehow get his name would be very disrespectful, again maybe its just a joke I am not understanding
I have a strange feeling this might actually be his name, based on a Canadian federal website listing for a company I found by searching for 'localthunk' and the name listed here. And yes, that absolutely should not be in this video.
Again, assuming this is right, I find nothing searching 'balatro' plus the name, and find that one website searching 'localthunk' plus the name. This is very much not public information.
Great, I hate being cursed with knowledge...
Beautiful video bravo!
An anonymous Saskatchewanian developer created one of the biggest games of the decade singlehandedly
Funny, this video says it's a named developer from Winnipeg...
I think that the description Jreg gave of Roguelikes is a little misleading. With how he worded it, almost any game that forces you back to the beginning when you fail would be a Roguelike (Super Mario Bros. for instance). The key element that makes Balatro a Roguelike is that when you first start there are cards that need to be unlocked in order for them to potentially come into play and those cards stay unlocked in subsequent playthroughs.
Now we just need a collaboration with Northernlion
YES JJ PLAYS BALATRO
Watching Balatro on 1x speed gives me anxiety.
I am an American, Michigan specifically. Here, Americans mostly see Canadians, as Americans with a different name.
If Canada was ever invaded, we would react like they invaded the USA itself. The tie is very close.
Cuphead came out in 2017 not 2014
JJ kinda looks like a Canadian Steven Tyler
No I don't.
@@JJMcCullough You don't YET, but you might once you've turned into a 70-year-old "Hot Granny" like Steven Tyler has done. 😉😁