Balatro

Balatro scores Jokers in a fixed left-to-right order, so arrangement matters. Jokers resolve left to right, and order matters hugely in Balatro. Mark Brown treated ordered triggering as a requirement for Word Play's modifier system because of it.

Word Play's score calculator loops through the player's owned modifiers in the order they arranged them. Mark noted that order rarely matters in Word Play itself. He used Balatro and Slay the Spire's relics as the reference points when listing requirements for the system.

Jokers ping and play a sound when they change the score. Each Joker shows a small animation and sound at the moment it contributes to the score. The player sees which Jokers fired and in what order.

Word Play copied this. Its loop plays the ping on a modifier when that modifier returns a real value instead of -1, which costs one line in the loop rather than code inside each perk.

Balatro scores Jokers in a fixed left-to-right order, so arrangement matters. Jokers resolve left to right, and order matters hugely in Balatro. Mark Brown treated ordered triggering as a requirement for Word Play's modifier system because of it.

Word Play's score calculator loops through the player's owned modifiers in the order they arranged them. Mark noted that order rarely matters in Word Play itself. He used Balatro and Slay the Spire's relics as the reference points when listing requirements for the system.

Balatro draws unique art for each Joker, which costs development time. Balatro gives every Joker its own art. Word Play uses a simple shared set of icons for its 160 perks instead, which Mark Brown says saved weeks.

Mark picked the option that took the least time throughout the project, even where the game was arguably worse for it, so it would finish while he still had energy.

Balatro launched shortly after building hype at Steam Next Fest. Balatro built huge hype at the February Steam Next Fest and launched for real a couple of weeks later.

Mark Brown cites it alongside Pepper Grinder, which launches about a month after its Next Fest, as a model for timing a release after a showcase. He plans to work backward from a June showcase to a July or August release.