The creator of Balatro has revealed fresh details on the hit indie card game’s development, including the fact he gave up playing other roguelikes for more than two years to avoid subconsciously borrowing ideas.
LocalThunk, the Canadian IT-worker-turned-indie-game-maestro, published a lengthy timeline of Balatro’s development today on his blog. It features insights into his design decisions while working on the project, and notes about his own personal life and health over the course of the last three years.
In December 2021, after beginning work on a Balatro prototype, LocalThunk said he made “a very conscious effort not to play any more roguelike games starting now”.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
“I want to be crystal clear here and say that this was not because I thought it would result in [Balatro being] 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,” LocalThunk continued.