GoKawiilNick Fernandez / Android Authority
Add Android Authority on Google: Preferred Source Google Discover
TL;DR A Redditor claims they’ve trained Google’s fruit fly brain simulation to play Balatro.
The model apparently has a 20% win rate on the easiest difficulty with a standard deck.
The Redditor says they are still training the model, so it could get better over time.
One of the most fun Android games of the past few years, Balatro remains a popular choice for many players. The game blends poker and solitaire into a fun yet challenging experience that many enjoy. However, one user has now managed to train a fruit fly (or at least a simulated fruit fly brain) to play the game.
Google recently released a complete map of an adult fruit fly’s brain, and people have been using it to make it do increasingly random (and interesting) things. User ActualAerie1011 trained it to play Balatro and shared a Reddit post showing the model playing a winning match.
According to the video, the model played the game with the default Red Deck on its lowest difficulty setting and managed to beat it. The user reportedly created a custom seed-finding algorithm. Balatro’s runs are randomized, so tools like this can dig up seeds likely to produce big scores.
They then had both the algorithm and the brain-based model play identical seeds, compared the outcomes, and rewarded the model when it performed well and penalized it when it didn’t.
ActualAerie1011 says the model currently has about a 20% win rate on the easiest setting, but they haven’t stopped training it. Meanwhile, some users in the Reddit thread have expressed skepticism about the claim, mainly because the user hasn’t posted any technical proof or a GitHub repository for others to review and verify.
... continue reading