In a recent Bloomberg interview with Balatro creator LocalThunk, the notably private, anonymous developer opened up a little bit about the roguelike card game's origins, including how he first realized he was on to something special with what had started as just another hobby project.
LocalThunk worked in IT before making Balatro, and was apparently a bit of a hobbyist developer, never releasing anything commercially or even publicly, but sharing games with friends and family to the tune of that devastatingly polite disinterest artists, writers, and other creative types are so familiar with; "Oh that's really nice, say whatever happened to going back to school?"
LocalThunk once again cited the Cantonese card game Big Two and the roguelike Luck Be a Landlord as major influences on Balatro, with development having begun at the end of 2021. Unlike LocalThunk's prior projects, his Balatro prototypes garnered a different response among playtesters. “I had a friend play, and he said, ‘Yeah, I really liked that game you sent over. I played it for 20, 30, or 40’—I can’t remember the number, but a lot of hours,” LocalThunk told Bloomberg. “I was thinking, ‘What on earth?’ There must be something here if he was playing it for that long.”
The rest, as they say, is history. LocalThunk continued to develop and iterate on Balatro while connecting with UK-based publisher, Playstack. The roguelite Poker-like is now a genuine phenomenon, and snagged both a 91% review score and 2024's overall game of the year award from us here at PC Gamer. In addition to maintaining his privacy, LocalThunk doesn't seem to have let the success change his life much, just quitting his IT job to work on gamedev full time and buying a house with his partner. As for what's next, LocalThunk continues to work on Balatro's big 1.1 update, and hasn't ruled out continuing to tinker on the game after that.
