they should make some sort of real card game based on the mysterious game played in Balatro...
1v1 physical card game. Each player gets one standard deck of cards with a different backing to differentiate. Every turn proceeds as follows:
- Both players draw eight cards
- Both players may choose up to eight cards to discard, then draw that number of cards to put back in their hand
- Both players present their best five-or-less-card poker hand. The player with the better hand gets five points. You must play at least one card.
- Each player gets the other player's played hand and adds it into their deck, then shuffles with discard, draws eight cards, and continues.
- First player to fifty points wins
- You gain one point whenever you play one of your opponent's cards in a hand, regardless of whether you win the hand. That's one point per card, so a hand with three of your opponent's cards will net you three points (on top of the possible winning bonus).
Additional rules:
- The power rankings of various impossible poker hands (e.g. five of a kind) are decided via loud argument
- Joker variant: once someone has won a game, they can decide a new rule (aka Joker) for the next game. This Joker must be stated clearly and must affect all parties equally. (e.g. "Two-pairs are worth two more points" is a valid Joker, as is "if anyone plays a seven they lose seven points," but "Bill gives me all his points if he ever gets more than ten" is not.) Jokers only last for one game, and may be discarded partway through a game if all parties agree that it's not a fun modifier.
- To play with more than two players, get three separate decks and setup a clockwise flow of cards from one player to the next. All other rules are the same
I'm not certain on names, but I'm thinking this would be called Palatro (thanks @aidan)
