Local Thunk, the developer behind the popular game Balatro, has shared a comprehensive account of the game's development journey on his personal blog. In a surprising revelation, Local Thunk confessed to not playing any roguelike games during Balatro's development, with a single exception. As of December 2021, he consciously decided to avoid roguelike games to maintain the joy of discovery and experimentation in game design, which he values deeply as a hobbyist.

"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, about a year and a half later, he broke his rule once by playing Slay the Spire, which he described as a game that left him in awe. "Holy shit," he wrote, "now **that** is a game." Initially, he started playing to study its controller implementation for card games but found himself deeply engaged with the game, grateful he hadn't played it earlier to avoid copying its design.

Local Thunk's blog post is filled with fascinating insights into the development process. He shared that the game's working folder was originally named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development. The working title for much of its development was "Joker Poker." He also discussed several scrapped features, including a pseudo-shop system for upgrading cards, a separate currency for rerolls, and a 'golden seal' mechanism for playing cards.

An interesting anecdote revealed how Balatro ended up with 150 Jokers. Due to a miscommunication during a meeting with the publisher Playstack in October 2023, Local Thunk initially mentioned 120 Jokers but later agreed to increase it to 150, finding it a better number.

Local Thunk also shared the origin of his developer name, which stems from a programming joke. His partner, while learning to code in R, humorously suggested naming variables "thunk." This led to the creation of "local thunk" in Lua programming, which he later adopted as his developer handle.

For those interested in more details about Balatro's creation, Local Thunk's blog is a treasure trove of information. IGN has praised Balatro highly, 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."