Balatro developer Local Thunk recently shared a fascinating development history on their personal blog, revealing a surprising detail: they avoided playing rogue-likes during Balatro's creation—except for one.
Their development timeline notes a conscious decision in December 2021 to abstain from playing any more rogue-likes. Thunk explains this wasn't to improve the game, but because game development is a hobby, not a business. The joy lay in the naive exploration of rogue-like and deck-building design (a genre entirely new to them), embracing experimentation and reinventing the wheel rather than copying existing successes. While this approach might have yielded a less polished final product, it prioritized the creative process itself.
However, a year and a half later, this self-imposed rule was broken. One game, Slay the Spire, changed everything. Thunk's reaction? "Holy shit," they wrote, "now that is a game." The reason for this exception? Initial struggles with controller implementation led to a peek at Slay the Spire's input handling. The result? A complete immersion in the game, prompting relief at having avoided it earlier to prevent unintentional design mirroring.
Thunk's post-mortem offers further intriguing insights. The initial working folder was named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development. The game's working title was "Joker Poker" for a significant portion of its lifecycle.
Several scrapped features are also detailed, including:
- A system where card upgrades were the sole method of character progression, similar to Super Auto Pets' leveling mechanic.
- A separate currency for rerolls, distinct from the percentage-based system.
- A "golden seal" mechanic returning played cards to hand after skipping all blinds.
The number of Jokers (150) resulted from a miscommunication with publisher Playstack. Initially planned for 120, a later discussion led to the increase, deemed superior by Thunk.
Finally, the origin of the name "Local Thunk" is explained as a programming joke stemming from a conversation with their partner learning R. The combination of Lua's "local" keyword and their partner's playful variable naming convention, "thunk," created the memorable moniker.
Local Thunk's blog post offers a much more comprehensive look at Balatro's development. IGN's glowing 9/10 review, describing Balatro as "A deck-builder of endlessly satisfying proportions," speaks for itself. The full blog post can be found [ttpp].
