Local Thunk Avoided Roguelikes in 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 design. Throughout the development of Balatro, Local Thunk made a deliberate choice to avoid playing roguelike games, with the exception of one notable instance. As of December 2021, he decided to steer clear of roguelikes to preserve the joy of discovery and exploration in his hobby of game-making.

"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," Local Thunk explained.

However, a year and a half later, he broke his rule once by downloading and playing Slay the Spire. "Holy shit," he wrote, "now **that** is a game." His initial intention was to study Slay the Spire's controller implementation for card games, but he found himself deeply engrossed in the game. He expressed relief at having avoided it earlier, as it might have influenced his design choices too heavily.

Local Thunk's blog post is rich with insights into the development process. He shared that the working folder for Balatro was initially named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development. The game's working title was "Joker Poker" for much of its development cycle.

He also discussed several scrapped features, including:

• "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 revealed how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. Local Thunk mentioned a miscommunication with his publisher, Playstack, during a meeting in October 2023. Initially, he had planned for 120 Jokers, but a subsequent meeting led to the number being misheard or misremembered as 150. Deciding that 150 was a better number, he added 30 more Jokers to the game.

Local Thunk also shared the origin of his developer handle, "Local Thunk." It stemmed from a humorous conversation with his partner, who was learning to code in R. When asked about naming variables, he went on a detailed explanation, only for his partner to respond with a preference for the name "thunk." This led to the creation of "local thunk," a playful nod to Lua programming syntax.

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