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

In an insightful blog post, Balatro developer Local Thunk shares a detailed account of the game's development journey, revealing a unique approach to game design. Notably, Local Thunk admits to not playing any roguelike games during the development of Balatro, except for one exception: Slay the Spire.

Starting in December 2021, Local Thunk made a deliberate choice to avoid roguelike games, including deckbuilders, which he had never played before. This decision was driven by a desire to explore game design naively and make mistakes, rather than borrowing established designs from existing games. "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," Local Thunk explained.

However, a year and a half later, Local Thunk broke this rule once by downloading Slay the Spire. The developer was initially seeking inspiration for controller implementation but ended up deeply engaged with the game. "Holy shit," he wrote, "now that is a game." Local Thunk expressed relief at having avoided playing it earlier, as it might have influenced his design choices.

The blog post also offers a glimpse into the early stages of Balatro's development. Initially, the project was simply named "CardGame" and remained so throughout development. The working title for much of the game's creation was "Joker Poker."

Local Thunk shared insights into several scrapped features, including:

• A version where the only way to upgrade anything is through a pseudo-shop system, allowing cards to be upgraded multiple times, similar to Super Auto Pets.
• A separate currency for rerolls.
• A 'golden seal' feature that would return a card to the player's hand after it had been played if all blinds were skipped.

An interesting anecdote revealed how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. This was the result of a miscommunication with the publisher, Playstack. Initially, Local Thunk mentioned having 120 Jokers, but a subsequent meeting led to a misunderstanding, resulting in the decision to increase the number to 150.

Finally, Local Thunk shared the origin of his developer handle, "Local Thunk." It stemmed from a humorous conversation with his partner about variable naming in programming. "My partner was learning to code in R at the time, and she asked me 'How do you name your variables?' I went on some rant about casing, using descriptive words, underscores, etc. She waits until I am finished and says 'I like to call mine thunk'. I thought that was just about the funniest thing I had ever heard," Local Thunk recounted. The name "Local Thunk" was inspired by the Lua programming language's use of the 'local' keyword for variable declaration.

For those interested in the full story behind Balatro, 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."