>>715175348
Balatro's popularity can be partially attributed to its combo system reusing poker hands which everyone is already familiar with. It's more accessible for players to get into because they don't have to relearn a whole game system. This also makes it easier to design because the dev also doesn't have to create a new game system and doesn't have to teach players how it works.

And because it's more popular and more people engage with it, that also means that there's more people experiencing and appreciating the changes it does make. So paradoxically, iterating on a familiar formula means it also gets more praise for being "novel" and "revolutionary" than games that invent something wholly new.

This is why devs get pissy with gamers. Gamers tend to over-index on the already popular games and praise minute changes as being revolutionary whereas genuinely novel games that take a lot more work also have a much harder time gaining exposure.

>>509704819
>mfw someone named Bills pays a toll

>>714684774
>secular
>new atheist
Todd is Catholic and the writers are not subtle about inserting deliberately Christian themes into the game.

You Christian cosplaying zoomer chuds have never actually spent any time inside a devout community, have you? Because if you hate preachy moral prescriptivism with overly safe, anti-sex overtones and zero cultural awareness, I got some baaaad news.

>>3773928
I think the real reason people get attached to old games is because the budgetary constraints incidentally lead to a lot of esoteric, quirky design. It's really hard to replicate this though because, as other anons have said, a lot of this stuff just feels janky and bad and only reveal their merit with a lot of time investment. The reason people played long enough to become invested back then was because these games were technically impressive for the time, which kept players hooked, and there were just fewer competing options. You would have a very difficult time finding commercial success with a similar design.