Someone trained Google’s fruit fly brain simulation to play Balatro

Probably the most fun Android games of the previous few years, Balatro stays a well-liked alternative for a lot of gamers. The sport blends poker and solitaire right into a enjoyable but difficult expertise that many get pleasure from. Nonetheless, one person has now managed to coach a fruit fly (or not less than a simulated fruit fly mind) to play the sport.

Google lately launched a whole map of an grownup fruit fly’s mind, and folks have been utilizing it to make it do more and more random (and attention-grabbing) issues. Person ActualAerie1011 skilled it to play Balatro and shared a Reddit put up displaying the mannequin taking part in a profitable match.

In response to the video, the mannequin performed the sport with the default Pink Deck on its lowest problem setting and managed to beat it. The person reportedly created a customized seed-finding algorithm. Balatro’s runs are randomized, so instruments like this will dig up seeds prone to produce huge scores.

They then had each the algorithm and the brain-based mannequin play an identical seeds, in contrast the outcomes, and rewarded the mannequin when it carried out properly and penalized it when it didn’t.

ActualAerie1011 says the mannequin at the moment has a few 20% win price on the simplest setting, however they haven’t stopped coaching it. In the meantime, some customers within the Reddit thread have expressed skepticism concerning the declare, primarily as a result of the person hasn’t posted any technical proof or a GitHub repository for others to assessment and confirm.

True or not, even the concept of a fruit fly mind taking part in Balatro higher than me is a tad disappointing. I used to be a lot happier when folks had been coaching it to commerce crypto, drive automobiles, and do different foolish issues. However being overwhelmed at Balatro by a fruit fly was not on my bingo card for 2026.