"A good game just has to be good and word of mouth will do the rest" I'm not entirely sold that it's this simple. Balatro isn't ONLY a good game. It's also an extremely unique one. And with that comes many questions - how unique your game has to be? How marketable does your game's premise has to be? Could a creative platformer also get that popular from word of mouth? Or would it have to be just as out of left field as something like Balatro?
I think it doesn't need to bee that unique on the surface, only so much that people get interested in it and want to see more. I spontaneously don't have any examples for games, but an Anime. Dungeon Meshi is just a simple story about a group exploring a dungeon, a story premise that there was a million other times, but it's also about cooking monsters. With this it has a very unique selling point where many people get interested and just started watching it and got absorbed into the Anime because it is very good. If the cooking wasn't in it many, like myself, wouldn't get interested in the Anime, because it would just be the next dungeon story thing.
Hmm yeah I definitely agree that for natural word of mouth to occur a game does have to be unique in some way. Balatro’s success is certainly thanks to its uniqueness, but there are so so many ‘unique’ roguelikes that come out all the time, so within the roguelike sphere (Olexa, NL, Retro), I think it’s main draw is its quality, not uniqueness. It definitely plays a huge factor in growing popular outside of that though…
![Gucci Mane & Sexyy Red - You Don't Love Me [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/j7IBqyFKT4c/mqdefault.jpg)
Worth mentioning that one of the other inspirations for Balatro came from LocalThunk watching NL play games, only for NL to end up playing his game
"A good game just has to be good and word of mouth will do the rest"
I'm not entirely sold that it's this simple. Balatro isn't ONLY a good game. It's also an extremely unique one.
And with that comes many questions - how unique your game has to be? How marketable does your game's premise has to be?
Could a creative platformer also get that popular from word of mouth? Or would it have to be just as out of left field as something like Balatro?
I think it doesn't need to bee that unique on the surface, only so much that people get interested in it and want to see more. I spontaneously don't have any examples for games, but an Anime. Dungeon Meshi is just a simple story about a group exploring a dungeon, a story premise that there was a million other times, but it's also about cooking monsters. With this it has a very unique selling point where many people get interested and just started watching it and got absorbed into the Anime because it is very good. If the cooking wasn't in it many, like myself, wouldn't get interested in the Anime, because it would just be the next dungeon story thing.
Hmm yeah I definitely agree that for natural word of mouth to occur a game does have to be unique in some way.
Balatro’s success is certainly thanks to its uniqueness, but there are so so many ‘unique’ roguelikes that come out all the time, so within the roguelike sphere (Olexa, NL, Retro), I think it’s main draw is its quality, not uniqueness. It definitely plays a huge factor in growing popular outside of that though…
I actually have no idea what ths game is so this is gonna be interesting.
Great video! I still haven't had the chance to play Balatro, but I'm looking forward to it in the future!
the multiplayer mod makes this game even more fun!
If I really can't stop I maybe shouldn't start D: