As someone with ADHD and a lot of other issues, my way to engage with games is something probably somewhat similar to many people, but more extreme in some ways.
I love games, I wanna make them too, but my way to actually play them is a bit.. weird I feel. I sometimes don't play games for weeks or months, only to discover a new one that hits just right, and I binge it for 50h to 100h (pretty much that amount every time) and then completely drop it. No matter how far I got, it is rare I can really complete anything.
As such, the open world game is a genre I've been avoiding for years, as well as other big budget games. The stuff that hit me in recent memory was Divinity: Original Sin 2 (I am not getting into Baldurs Gate until I have summer break) or Vampire Survivors.
The Neurospicy gaymer
Vampire Survivors is a special game, as you will probably have heard from other people, especially the ones with exploitable character traits like me. The way it is set up, with the combination of items, the hordes of enemies you go through, the power fantasy, the sounds, the fast restarts, the unlocking new stuff allowing for new combos and new slaughters, it creates all the good chemicals in us ADHD folk, but without exploiting it for making money off of us.
And I have found just another one like it. Many compare it to Slay the Spire, I didn't play that one though, but it's set up and gameplay reminds me of Vampire Survivor. Sure, the rogue like will feel at home for rogue like people, but I am not a rogue like people, in fact I'm bad at it. I am also bad at Balatro, but the way the game plays, I still enjoy it immensely.
The Gameplay
After that way too long introduction, let's talk about what it is actually.
Balatro is a card game rogue like, that uses a lot of the terms and the basic cards from poker, but famously the developers didn't know anything about the card game when making theirs, and you can tell. That's not a bad thing, rather funny actually. The basic gameplay in the start is the closest you get to the classic gambling game, you get dealt a hand of the 52 card stack, and have to play a poker hand. High card, two pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, straight, flush, straight flush, full house, everyone is here. Every poker hand has base stats in the two main primary gameplay loop stats, score and mult(iplication). A hand might have 40 score base and 3 multiplier, adding up to 120 points, but the cards played themselves matter too, as they add their value to it, 1 to 10 for numbers and faces, and 11 for aces. So a poker hand played with high value cards will yield more points. Your other resource is hands and discards, every round you can play so many hands to reach the required amount of points, called blinds, and you may discard a hand full of cards how many times you have discards left. Points increase every round, and when you beat the small and the big blind, a “boss blind” stands before you, and these are the really challenging parts, as they have unique effects, like excluding a suit of cards from having their points scored, and other funky stuff. When you beat it, your “ante” increases.
Now, the fun part starts every time you beat a blind, getting to the shop the shop, with the money you made defeating them. Balatro gives you little loot boxes that contain items to improve cards, give them more score, add mult, do things on conditions like when the card is discarded or hold until the end of the round, as well as upgrade your poker hands, so they have more base score and mult. The spectral cards are a bit special, as they have more severe effects, usually at a price, like destroying 5 random cards of your deck and giving you $20. What we are here for tho, are the jokers. These are the rogue like fun effects, and as of release there are 150 of them, ranging from simple effects like adding score or mult whenever a suit or even or odd cards are played, to cards being upgraded when you play a poker hand, reroll the shop or other stuff, as to really wild things like multiplying your multiplication on certain conditions, saving you from defeat, copying the effect of a neighboring joker and many many more. You may hold 5 jokers by default, and you can sell them as you please, and you might hold 2 consumables, the cards you get out of the booster packs executing the previously described upgrade effects to deck cards or poker hands, as well as the spectral cards. There is also a voucher, one for every boss blind defeated, that also have useful effects, like reducing prices in the shop or making certain things appear in it more often.
From this description, you might imagine how the game goes now, upgrade your deck, your poker hands, collect the best combination of pokers, simple and very fun. There are more nuances to it, but you will get into that when you play it. Just adding up your combo, defeating bigger and bigger blinds, 1k, 10k, 100k, 1.000k, later apparently there are even e-numbered blinds, it makes the neurospicy brain chemicals with all those numbers going wild. Balatro also does this thing, as it is counting your cards and applies your effects, if it goes on for long enough, the effects get faster and faster, and if your score and mult become large enough during that, large enough to destroy the blind in one hand, it starts to catch fire, it's so satisfying.
Me and Balatro
As previously mentioned, I am bad at it, as of writing, I won 3 out of like 150 rounds, in like 40h of playing it, but tbh that doesn't matter to me much. I love just doing something with my hands while consuming stuff, reading up on things, working, falling asleep, and Balatro is perfect for it. As you quickly develop an eye for your hands and for the jokers and upgrades, you play it almost mindlessly (or maybe that's just me, and the reason why I'm not good at it (but I'm also bad at math)).
Where in the past clicker games have filled that this hole in my heart, right now, Balatro slots into it better than any cookie clicker clone ever did or could. Once I reach that 50h to 100h mark I might not play it anymore, but actually, there is a chance it stays my background game, that I always have on hand like a stim-toy (it's certainly cooler than a fidget spinner).
My poor poor laptop will heat up having to run it on Intel graphics alone quite a lot longer probably, as I intend to dark soulsing (slamming my head against that wall until I am either good or lucky) my way to 100% of the collection at least.
If you are anything like me, be vary of it's addictive effects, and enjoy.