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Balatro Mod Project |
/jokers/ |
Hi! I've begun working on a balatro mod. A full release and github project will come later!
This doc is laid out in this order:
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Overall list of all cards names and their status
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Programmed Cards - working in game with few or no bugs and ready for replacement art
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Planning and concepts - cards still being developed in the planning phase
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Planning | The concept is locked in |
| Debugging | Mostly written and added to game |
| Programmed | Placeholder art added and debugged |
| Completed | Finished with completed art |
Type | Card Name | Rarity | Status | --|---|---| -- | -- Joker | Golden Repeater | Uncommon | Programmed Joker | Lucky Retriever | Uncommon | Programmed Joker | Fickle Fox | Uncommon | Programmed Joker | Fickle Fox Follow Up - Benevolence | Gated | Programmed Joker | Akuma Themed Card | Common | WIP | Thanks Akravator Joker | Felicette | Uncommon | Completed | Thanks MarioFan597 Joker | Lord of Gold | Rare | Programmed Joker | Hachiko | Common | Programmed Joker | Sonar Bat | Common | Completed | Thanks MarioFan597 Joker | 6's and 9's (Kyuubi) | Common | Programmed Joker | Bandit Loach | Uncommon | Programmed Joker | Holowing Owl | Rare| Programmed --|--|-- Tarot | Enfeeble | Common | Programmed Spectral | Meteor Shower | Rare* | Programmed Spectral | Polymerization | Rare* | Programmed Booster | Holofoil Pack | Rare | Programmed Booster | Negative Pack | Rare & Expensive | Programmed Voucher | Fourfingered Voucher | Completed --|--|-- Joker | Power Up First Card | Planning
* these should be equal rarity to Aura
These cards are fully working and are ready to have concept art replaced by pixel art to whoever woudl like to do them!
What the sections mean:
- Card name - My idea for a name for the card, open to suggestion if you have a good idea :)
- Core Concept - what I've programmed the card to do
- Design - my idea for how this card should look, or how I styled it in my concept art. If you're an artist and have a different idea, then feel free to deviate from this idea
- Concept Art - I tried my best to make these
Core Concept - repeat and small chance to gain extra cards when golden cards played. Like a dog that fetches and comes back with two balls
Design: A golden retriever dog in Balatro-style with two tennis balls in its mouth.
Effect:
- When a gold card is played, one in three chance of a copy of it being added to your deck.
- Gold cards are counted twice
Core Concept - repeat and small chance to gain extra cards when Lucky cards played. LIke a dog that fetches and comes back with two balls
Design: An irish setter or other similar dog in Balatro-style with two tennis balls in its mouth and luck based iconography
Effect: When a lucky card is played, one in three chance of a copy of it being added to your deck. Can retrigger lucky cards
Core Concept - may grant golden seal to played cards, can be lucky and get additional procs before vanishes. Might vanish at any time.
Design - a fox quizzically looking at a Fox statue in a shrine, like the Kyoto Fox Shrine complex Fushimi Inari, where people pay tribute to the fickle fox spirit who may bless their business ventures.
Effect
- Fickle Fox
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- Applies gold seal to played cards randomly
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- places up to six then vanishes
- One in six chance to vanish at the end of the round
Art Concepts
Design - some form of ethereal fox spirit presence, possibly in a temple. Could give off 'Ashura' or other cosmis deity vibes
Effect Reward the accrual of Gold Seal Cards
- Follow up Joker, only available after fickly fox vanishes
- Gold Seal cards apply 1.5x mult when kept in hand (kind of an inverse of the normal benefit of playing gold seals)
- really goes wild when a gold seal is on a steel card!
Concept art - unused
Finalized art
Core Concept - a nod to a famous fighter. We can make a play on words about him being a bear, because his name could be misread as 'A kuma', and kuma means bear.
- Features the Japanese kanji for "Heaven" (天), pronounced "ten".
- Backwards facing fighter with kanji for heaven
- Backwards facing fighter with katakana for 'joker'
Effect: When a 10 is played, gains +2 chips
- if all cards in hand are tens, applies +15 mult
Core Concept - The first cat in space! The idea for this card is to reward cards with planet seals. Again to explore and open up more end-game scoring options for longer runs.
Concept - a cat in or on a rocket ship?
 Core Concept - not fitting in the overall theme but the idea is to nod to a famous Lord of Gold from a popular trading card game. He will grant xMult for gold cards. He will be a Rare card.
Concept - pixel art representation of Eldlich the golden lord in his famous reclining pose. Already made a custom frame for this one.
Core Concept - He should play just like walkie-talkie but for 8's and 5's, a play on his name Hachi = Eight, Ko - would be Go (which is 5) but applying the " modifier as a pun. Goes very nicely with Fibonacci.
Design - A nod to the famous dog with a statue in Tokyo. I don't remember there being cherry trees near him but its not far from the area, so we can take artistic license here like in my concept card.
Core Concept - Just for newbies, it's a bat that shows the next card in your hand.
Design - I pictured a mom rat using sonar and the baby covering its ears. I spent a long time working on the ears qq
 Core Concept - This card rewards played 6's and 9's in a similar manner to walkie-talkie. Goes nicely with odd Todd.
Design - Open to interpretation but the idea was a Hemingway cat (six toes) with a cute Kyuubi (a nine tailed fox). I remember the area where I saw Hemingway's cats looking like it had French Quarter vibes so I put them in the french quarter in my first stab at it.
Core Concept - An alternate take on Spaceman. He always upgrades the first played hand per round but charges you $2. Then after that he might upgrade any played hand for free but with worse odds than spaceman.
Design - I pictured a cute little loach in the kind of sand caves they make. They're the cutest little fish, I used to have a tank full of them.
 Core Concept - I always loved hologram cards as a collector as a kid. I think they need more love. This will retrigger each hologram card so it goes great with an xMult joker. I thought it would be fun to have a low proc rate to grant hologram to another played card if the played hand includes at least one. Like 'contagious holograms'
Design - A snowy owl with lisa frank like holograms infront of a moon with a 'moondog', one of those ice rings around a full moon you see sometimes.
Core Concept - The opposite of a Strength card
Design - For some reason a little yowling kitten seemed right for this one.
Core Concept - This spectral card is like aura, but applies to your whole hand of cards in the Shop. However, it also has a Wheel of Fortune like chance to do nothing.
Design - to keep with the animal theme, a cat or other animal looking through a telescope and the sky is full of meteros or shooting stars
Core Concept - A risk reward spectral. This might apply Glass, Steel or Gold to any hand in your whole hand in the shop, like Meteor Shower. It might also destroy a single card too.
Design - Totally open to interpetation, I did a bad job recreating the art from the card game for this one.
Core Concept - An expensive an rare booster with guaranteed holofoil cards inside. Implemented for Jokers only but thought about doing this for playing cards too.
Design - A nod to the Yugioh "Maximum Gold' series of booster packs with an eye catching holofoily design. Totally open to interpretation
Core Concept - An expensive ($15 or maybe $20) and rare booster with guaranteed NEGATIVE cards inside.
Design - A nod to the Yugioh "Maximum Gold' series of booster packs with an eye catching negative palette design. Totally open to interpretation
Core Concept - Buying it gives you a negative four fingered joker one time
Design - I just think it's neat
These cards all need some more work in the areas of theming and affects
Design: A Joker card featuring an anime-style transformation with spiky black hair (base form) and spiky blonde hair with glowing green eyes (powered-up form) in retro pixel art. Effect: When single or pair card played as the first hand, it increases the power level of both cards by +1.
Plays with 7's and 9's
Interacts especially with holographic cards
Applies Holo two two cards
Clone Card → Creates one copy of itself and increases the copy’s power level by +1.
Undertow → Replaces a played single card with a number 8 card.
Squidlord → Eights become lucky & wild, and hit twice.
Seven's themed joker ideas
- Cat sith themed lucky 7's joker that refires 7's
- Follow up joker which adds +chips when 7's are scored
- Come up with overall mod name
- setup standalone github project
- enable issues
- create Releases pipeline for ease of use
I want to workshop some Ideas for long term viability, i.e. most of the power in decks comes from same-same builds like Mime and Baron
- Mime - retrigger all cards in hand
- Baron - steel like trigger for all kings held in hand
- Planetary cards apply steel like mult with certain legendary
- Dusk - retrigger all cards on final hand
- I'd like a one/two joker setup in my mod. One applied a buff to a card but is ephemeral
- another low probability card rewards the buff. Players could have fun using Death and the copy card spectral to make more, or use deck thinning. Thought is that maybe we increase the xMult per card played with buff, OR when a card with buff is played, increase Joker xMult.
- Blue seal cards apply an extra affect Joker, maybe we can name after a famous original astronomer?
- Gold seal card affect joker? Midas? Gold seal cards add mult = to held dollars in hand
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- Applies gold seal to last played hand of cards? First played hand?
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- Could be Golden Fox Effigy
- One is six chance to vanish
- Follow up Joker, similar to Gros Michel and Cavendish, once fleet fox vanshes
- Gold Seal cards apply 1.5x mult
- need to implement some kind of depletion, or it's basically like turning an entire deck into quasi-glass
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- Increases level of played hand once per round. Eats 30 chips as payment
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- Starts at $3. Adds + chips to each card played. Gone after six hands
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- Reveals next card in deck
- Elemental joker which changes alignment from red/black. If only cards of alignment are played, xMult upgrades once per round. But resets if wrong alignment played.
good synergy with odd card
Card
- Blesses up to five played cards with a blue seal
- xmult for gold cards held in hand, not scored (inverse of gold cards to reward saving)
Something
Radiance
Image pixel size Image size should be 71 x 95
- Special thanks to the official Balatro / Balatro modding discord
- Special thanks to the Extra Credit team for their fantastic documentation on Balatro and modding
- Special thanks to the Triple Click podcast for introducing me to Balatro
- Special thanks to Roffle for introducing me to the world of modded Balatro