Local Thunk Avoided Roguelikes During Balatro 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 a fascinating approach to game creation. Throughout the development of Balatro, Local Thunk consciously avoided playing other roguelike games, with one notable exception.

In December 2021, Local Thunk decided to steer clear of other roguelike games, stating, "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, a year and a half later, Local Thunk broke his own rule once by downloading and playing Slay the Spire. His reaction was immediate and strong: "Holy shit," he wrote. "now **that** is a game." The reason for playing Slay the Spire was to examine its controller implementation for card games, but he found himself deeply engaged with the game. He expressed relief at having waited until that point to play it, as he feared it might have influenced his design too heavily.

Local Thunk's blog post offers numerous insights into the development process. Initially, the project folder was simply named "CardGame," and it remained unchanged throughout development. The working title for the game was "Joker Poker" for much of its creation.

The post also delves into several scrapped features, 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."

An interesting anecdote explains how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. Local Thunk initially mentioned 120 Jokers to his publisher, Playstack, but a subsequent meeting resulted in a miscommunication, leading to the final count of 150 Jokers. Local Thunk embraced the higher number, believing it improved the game.

The origin of Local Thunk's developer name also stems from a humorous exchange about programming. His partner, while learning to code in R, mentioned naming variables "thunk," which Local Thunk found amusing. Combining this with the Lua programming language's use of the "local" keyword, "local thunk" was born, eventually becoming his developer handle.

For those interested in the full story behind Balatro, Local Thunk's blog provides a wealth of information. IGN has praised Balatro, giving 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."