Local Thunk Avoided Roguelikes in Balatro Development, Except Slay the Spire

Balatro developer Local Thunk has shared a comprehensive account of the game's development journey on his personal blog, revealing an intriguing approach to game design. Throughout the development of Balatro, Local Thunk consciously avoided playing other roguelike games, with the exception of one notable instance. As of December 2021, he decided to stop playing roguelike games to maintain the novelty and excitement of exploring game design on his own terms.

"I want to be crystal clear here and say that this was not because I thought it would result in a better game," Local Thunk explained. "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, a year and a half later, Local Thunk made an exception by downloading and playing Slay the Spire. He described the experience as eye-opening, stating, "Holy shit, now **that** is a game." Initially, he played it to study controller implementation for card games but found himself captivated by its design. He was grateful for delaying the experience, noting that playing it earlier might have led him to mimic its design, either intentionally or subconsciously.

Local Thunk's blog post is packed with fascinating details about Balatro's development. Early on, he used the simple folder name "CardGame" for the project, which he never changed. The game was known internally as "Joker Poker" for much of its development cycle. He also shared insights into several features that were considered but ultimately scrapped, such as:

• "a version where the only way to upgrade anything is to upgrade the cards in your deck in a sort of pseudo-shop, and those cards can be upgraded multiple times (think like Super Auto Pets, pets have different XP/levels when combined, same idea)"
• "a separate currency for rerolls outside of %1quot;"
• "a ‘golden seal’ to be added to playing cards when you skip all blinds that returns that card to hand after it has been played"

The blog also recounts how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. This decision stemmed from a miscommunication during a meeting with the publisher, Playstack, in October 2023. Local Thunk initially mentioned having 120 Jokers, but a subsequent meeting led to the number being misheard or misremembered as 150. He decided that 150 was a better number and added 30 more Jokers to the game.

Finally, Local Thunk revealed the origin of his developer name, which is rooted in a programming joke. His partner, while learning to code in R, humorously named her variables "thunk." Local Thunk, inspired by the Lua programming language's use of the "local" keyword for variable declaration, combined the two to create "local thunk."

For those interested in the intricacies of game development, Local Thunk's blog offers a wealth of information and can be found [here](link to blog). At IGN, we have a high regard for 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."