In a fascinating deep dive into the development of Balatro, the game's creator, known as Local Thunk, shared an extensive history on his personal blog. One of the most striking revelations is that Local Thunk consciously avoided playing roguelike games during Balatro's development, with one notable exception.
Starting in December 2021, Local Thunk decided not to play any roguelike games. This decision was not made to enhance the game's quality but rather to preserve the joy of discovery and exploration that he finds in game development. "I want to be crystal clear here and say that this was not because I thought it would result in a better game, this was because making games is my hobby, releasing them and making money from them is not, so naively exploring roguelike design (and especially deckbuilder design, since I had never played one before) was part of the fun for me. I wanted to make mistakes, I wanted to reinvent the wheel, I didn’t want to borrow tried-and-true designs from existing games. That likely would have resulted in a more tight game but it would have defeated the purpose of what I love about making games," he explained.
However, a year and a half later, Local Thunk broke his rule just once by downloading and playing Slay the Spire. His reaction was immediate and intense: "Holy shit," he wrote, "now **that** is a game." Initially, he intended to study Slay the Spire's controller implementation for his own game, but he found himself captivated by its design. "I did this because I was having some troubles in my controller implementation and I wanted to see how they handled controller inputs for a card game but I ended up getting sucked in. Thank goodness I avoided playing it until now because I surely would have just copied their incredible design (intentionally or subconsciously)."
Local Thunk's blog post also provides a wealth of other insights into the development process. For instance, the game's working folder was initially named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development. The working title for much of the project was "Joker Poker."
Several scrapped features were also discussed, including a version where upgrades were only possible through a pseudo-shop system similar to Super Auto Pets, a separate currency for rerolls, and a 'golden seal' feature for playing cards that would return them to the player's hand after use.
An amusing anecdote explains how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. Local Thunk had a meeting with his publisher, Playstack, where he mentioned having 120 Jokers. A subsequent miscommunication led to the number being increased to 150, which he ultimately decided was a better fit for the game.
Lastly, Local Thunk shared the origin of his developer handle. It stems from a programming joke involving his partner, who humorously named her variables "thunk." Combined with Lua's use of the "local" keyword for variable declarations, "local thunk" was born.
For those interested in the full story, Local Thunk's blog offers a comprehensive look at the making of Balatro. IGN has praised the game, giving it a 9/10 and describing it as "A deck-builder of endlessly satisfying proportions, it's the sort of fun that threatens to derail whole weekend plans as you stay awake far too late staring into the eyes of a jester tempting you in for just one more run."
