Local Thunk Didn't Play Any Roguelike Games During Balatro's Development...Except Slay the Spire

Balatro developer Local Thunk has shared an in-depth look at the game's development journey on his personal blog, revealing an intriguing detail: he purposefully avoided playing roguelike games during the development of Balatro, with one notable exception.

Local Thunk mentioned that starting in December 2021, he consciously chose not to play roguelike games. He explained, "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."

However, this rule was broken once after a year and a half when Local Thunk downloaded Slay the Spire. He described the experience with enthusiasm, stating, "Holy shit, now **that** is a game." Initially, he played it to study controller inputs for card games, but he found himself deeply engrossed. He expressed relief at not having played it earlier, fearing it might have led him to copy its impressive design, either intentionally or subconsciously.

Local Thunk's post-mortem provides a treasure trove of insights. For instance, he disclosed that the working folder for Balatro was initially named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development. The game was also known as "Joker Poker" for much of its development cycle.

He also shared details about scrapped features, such as a version where card upgrades were the only way to enhance gameplay, akin to Super Auto Pets, a separate currency for rerolls, and a 'golden seal' mechanism for playing cards that allowed them to return to hand after being played.

An amusing anecdote revealed how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. Local Thunk recounted a meeting with his publisher, Playstack, where he mentioned having "120 Jokers." A miscommunication led to the number being interpreted as 150, which he ultimately decided was a better fit and thus added 30 more Jokers to the game.

Additionally, Local Thunk shared the origin of his developer name. It stemmed from a humorous conversation with his partner about variable naming in coding. She mentioned using "thunk" for variables, which he found amusing. Coupled with the Lua programming language's use of the "local" keyword, "local thunk" was born.

For those eager to dive deeper into Balatro's development story, Local Thunk's full blog post is available [here](link to the blog). 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."