Balatro creator Local Thunk has shared an in-depth development retrospective on his personal blog, revealing that he intentionally avoided playing any roguelike titles throughout the game's creation—with one notable exception.
According to his development timeline, the pseudonymous developer decided in December 2021 to stop playing any further roguelikes from that point forward.
"I want to be perfectly clear: this wasn't about creating a better game. For me, game development is a passion, not a business. I genuinely enjoyed exploring roguelike mechanics—and particularly deckbuilding, which I had never experienced before—through trial and error. I wanted to make missteps, to rediscover systems from scratch rather than borrowing proven formulas from existing titles. That approach might have yielded a more polished game, but it would have undermined the creative joy I find in making games."
But a year and a half later, Local Thunk broke his own rule—just once. He downloaded Slay the Spire. "Wow," he wrote, "now that is how you make a game."
He explained what prompted him to try it: "I was having trouble implementing controller support and wanted to see how they handled inputs in a card game. But once I started playing, I got completely absorbed. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't play it earlier—I likely would have ended up mimicking their brilliant design, whether intentionally or subconsciously."
Local Thunk's post-mortem offers numerous fascinating details. For instance, he initially named the project folder "CardGame" and never changed it. He also disclosed that the working title for much of the development cycle was "Joker Poker."
The developer also outlined several discarded features, such as:
"a system where the only upgrades came from improving cards in your deck through a pseudo-shop, allowing multiple upgrades per card (similar to Super Auto Pets, where pets gain XP/levels when merged)""a separate currency specifically for rerolls, distinct from standard money""a 'golden seal' applied to playing cards when you skipped all blinds, allowing the card to return to your hand after being played"
He also shared how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers—apparently due to a communication mix-up:
"During an October 2023 meeting with Playstack [the publisher], I told them the game would include '120 Jokers.' Later that week, in another meeting, someone referenced '150 Jokers.' I couldn't recall whether I'd misspoken or they misheard me, but 150 sounded much better—so I added 30 more Jokers to the plan."
Local Thunk also explained the origin of his developer alias. In short, it's a programming inside joke:
"My partner was learning to code in R and asked me how I name variables. I gave a detailed explanation about casing, descriptive terms, underscores, etc. When I finished, she said, 'I like to call mine thunk.' I found it absolutely hilarious.
"Since variables in Lua are often declared with the 'local' keyword, 'local thunk' was born! I didn't adopt the name immediately, but when I eventually needed an online handle, that moment stuck with me."
Local Thunk's blog contains even more behind-the-scenes stories about Balatro's development. Unsurprisingly, we at IGN are huge fans—we awarded the game a 9/10, praising it as 'A deck-building masterpiece of deeply satisfying proportions, the kind of experience that can hijack entire weekends as you stay up far too late, lured by the jester’s call for just one more run.'
