Local Thunk Admits to Playing Only Slay the Spire During Balatro Development

Local Thunk, the developer behind the popular game Balatro, has provided a detailed account of the game's development journey on his personal blog. In a surprising revelation, he admits to not playing any roguelike games during Balatro's development, with a single exception. As of December 2021, Local Thunk consciously decided to avoid playing other roguelike games, emphasizing that this choice was not about creating a better game but preserving the joy of naive exploration and the freedom to make mistakes and innovate without external influences.

However, this self-imposed rule was broken once after a year and a half when he downloaded Slay the Spire. Local Thunk's reaction was immediate and strong, describing it as "Holy shit, now **that** is a game." His initial intent 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 until then, fearing it might have led him to mimic its design, either intentionally or subconsciously.

Local Thunk's blog post also shares intriguing details about the game's early stages. The working folder for Balatro was initially named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development. The game was referred to as "Joker Poker" for a significant portion of its development cycle. He also discussed several scrapped features, such as a system where cards could be upgraded multiple times in a pseudo-shop, a separate currency for rerolls, and a 'golden seal' feature for playing cards.

An amusing anecdote from the blog explains how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers instead of the originally planned 120. This change resulted from a miscommunication with the game's publisher, Playstack, leading Local Thunk to decide that 150 was a better number and subsequently adding 30 more Jokers to the game.

The origin of Local Thunk's developer handle is equally interesting. It stemmed from a humorous conversation with his partner about variable naming in programming. The term "thunk" was a playful suggestion from his partner, and combined with the Lua programming language's use of the "local" keyword, "local thunk" was born.

For those interested in the full development story of Balatro, Local Thunk's blog offers a wealth of information. IGN has praised Balatro, awarding it a 9/10 and describing it as a "deck-builder of endlessly satisfying proportions" that could captivate players for hours on end.