Balatro developer, Local Thunk, recently shared a fascinating development history on their personal blog. Surprisingly, they reveal minimal roguelike game experience prior to creating Balatro—with one crucial exception.
Their development timeline notes a conscious decision in December 2021 to avoid playing further roguelikes. The reasoning? Game creation is a hobby, not a business. Experimentation and "reinventing the wheel" were prioritized over borrowing established designs. While this might have resulted in a less polished game, it aligned with their creative process.
However, a year and a half later, this self-imposed rule was broken—just once. After downloading Slay the Spire, Local Thunk confessed, "Holy shit, now that is a game." The initial motivation was to study controller input handling in a card game, but they became completely engrossed. Fortunately, this late discovery prevented potential unintentional design mimicry.
Local Thunk's post-mortem is packed with interesting anecdotes. The game's original working folder was simply named "CardGame," a name that stuck throughout much of development. The working title, "Joker Poker," also reveals an early design direction.
Several scrapped features are detailed, including: a pseudo-shop system for upgrading cards (similar to Super Auto Pets), a separate currency for rerolls, and a "golden seal" mechanic to return played cards to hand.
The number of Jokers (150) resulted from a miscommunication with publisher Playstack. Initially planned for 120, it was later adjusted to 150—a number deemed superior by the developer.
Finally, the origin of the name "Local Thunk" is explained. It's a programming joke stemming from a conversation with their partner learning R programming. The combination of Lua's "local" keyword and their partner's preferred variable name "thunk" led to the now well-known developer handle.
Local Thunk's blog offers a much more detailed account of Balatro's creation. IGN, clearly impressed, awarded the game a 9/10, praising 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."
