As much as I'd like my game to spread as far and wide as Balatro, I understand that it won't, not anywhere close. It's just not going to have the polish that Balatro has (I don't have the time or energy, I'm in my 40s with a spouse and a day job).

But hopefully it will be fun to play (it is a more fully-featured remake of an old free web game I made many, many years ago that was played millions of times).

And games that aren't already super high quality mostly don't sell on iOS anymore, at least not before people download it for free and try them. You pretty much have to make the base game free so people will download it and then provide an unlock later.

I'm not trying to be obnoxious about ads. I'm wanting to use the Zach Gage model (Knotwords, Flipflop Solitaire, Good Sudoku, SpellTower). Some minimal ads in between matches (the matches last 5-10 minutes by themselves) and a few extras like themes or detailed stats behind a one-time unlock of a few bucks. I hate the standard model of throwing ads in your face every 30 seconds and wouldn't do that for my game.

Also another native feature that Love2D doesn't support is the iOS Haptics library. Love2D only allows for a half second vibrate at full power and it's way too much. Balatro uses the iOS native haptics library as well (it's obvious, they're very light and quick vibrations). These haptics are super common in iOS games nowadays so it will seem weird if it doesn't support them properly.