Local Thunk, the developer behind the popular game Balatro, has shared a detailed account of the game's development journey on his personal blog. In a candid revelation, he admits to not playing any roguelike games during the development of Balatro, except for one notable exception.
Starting in December 2021, Local Thunk consciously avoided playing roguelike games, including deckbuilders, a genre he had never explored before. His reason for this decision was not to enhance the game's quality but to preserve the joy of his hobby. "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 once by downloading and playing Slay the Spire. His reaction was immediate and strong: "Holy shit," he wrote, "now that is a game." Initially, he played it to study controller implementation for card games, but he found himself deeply engrossed in the game. He expressed relief at having avoided it earlier, fearing that playing it sooner might have led him to unintentionally replicate its design.
Local Thunk's blog post also offers a treasure trove of other insights. He revealed that the game's development folder was simply named "CardGame" and never changed, and the working title for much of its development was "Joker Poker." He shared details about several scrapped features, including:
- A version where the only way to upgrade anything is through a pseudo-shop that allows cards to be upgraded multiple times, similar to Super Auto Pets.
- A separate currency for rerolls.
- A ‘golden seal’ feature that would return a card to the player's hand after it has been played if all blinds were skipped.
An amusing anecdote about the game's final number of Jokers, set at 150, was due to a miscommunication with the publisher, Playstack. Initially, Local Thunk mentioned having "120 Jokers," but a subsequent meeting led to the number being misheard or misremembered as 150. He decided 150 was a better number and adjusted the game accordingly.
Lastly, Local Thunk shared the origin of his developer name, "Local Thunk," which stems from a programming joke. His partner, while learning to code in R, humorously suggested naming variables "thunk." In Lua, variables are sometimes declared with the "local" keyword, thus "local thunk" was born, eventually becoming his developer handle.
For those interested in the full story behind Balatro's development, Local Thunk's blog provides a comprehensive and engaging read. 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."
Latest Downloads
Downlaod
Top News
