In a fascinating deep dive into the development of the highly acclaimed game Balatro, the game's developer, known only as Local Thunk, shared an extensive history of the game's creation on his personal blog. One of the most striking revelations from this post is that Local Thunk deliberately avoided playing any roguelike games during the development of Balatro—except for one notable exception.
Local Thunk explained that as of December 2021, he made a conscious decision to steer clear of roguelike games. He emphasized that this choice was not about creating a better game but rather about the joy of discovery and exploration that comes with 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 wrote.
However, about a year and a half later, Local Thunk broke his rule 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 played it to examine how the game handled controller inputs for a card game, but he found himself deeply engrossed. He expressed gratitude for not having played it earlier, as it might have influenced his design choices too heavily.
Local Thunk's blog post also includes several intriguing insights into the game's development process. For instance, he revealed that the working folder for Balatro was originally named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout the project. The game's working title during much of its development was "Joker Poker."
Additionally, Local Thunk shared details about various features that were considered but ultimately scrapped. These included a version where the only way to upgrade anything was through a pseudo-shop system for cards, a separate currency for rerolls, and a 'golden seal' feature that would return a card to the player's hand after it was played if all blinds were skipped.
An amusing anecdote in the post explains how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. Local Thunk had initially mentioned to his publisher, Playstack, that the game would feature 120 Jokers. However, due to a miscommunication, someone at Playstack mentioned 150 Jokers in a subsequent meeting. Local Thunk decided that 150 was a better number and added 30 more Jokers to the game.
Finally, Local Thunk shared the origin story of his developer handle, "Local Thunk." It stemmed from a humorous conversation with his partner, who was learning to code in R. When asked about naming variables, Local Thunk went into detail about best practices, only for his partner to respond that she liked to call hers "thunk." This led to the creation of "local thunk," a playful nod to Lua programming language's variable declaration.
For those interested in the full story behind Balatro, Local Thunk's blog provides a wealth of information. IGN has praised Balatro, awarding 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."
