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You will hear a lot aboutBalatroover the coming weeks and months.
What you might hear about less is its creator, a person who goes only by the name LocalThunk.
The game began with an intent to hide in plain sight.
“I don’t need to show other people that I love making games,” LocalThunk says.
“Part of the identity thing with ‘LocalThunk’ is that I have a life outside of this game.
This game isn’t my identity at least, I don’t want it to be.
I love working on it.
I love that it’s doing well.
But I also like that I’ve compartmentalized it.
It’s healthier that way.”
They’re the sole owners and downloaders of anything LocalThunk has made in the years before Balatro.
Why go to so much effort for such a small audience?
LocalThunk’s answer says a lot about the kind of game maker they are.
“Making [games] for my friends is a way to a kind of an end goal.
It’s not playtesting.
It doesn’t need to be tested.
Just a thing I made.”
Balatro began in the same way, as an off-hours scratch of an itch LocalThunk had had for years.
“You’re not fighting anyone, necessarily,” LocalThunk says.
“There’s conflict, but the theme of the conflict is different from other games.
It’s about numbers getting bigger, and I really liked that idea.”
The online bits had to go.
Remember, LocalThunk watched videos of Luck Be a Landlord, rather than play the game.
“That’s part of the reason why [Balatro] has succeeded,” LocalThunk says.
“I don’t know the tropes.
I didn’t want to subconsciously take design elements from those games and then suddenly mine is less original.
Sometimes it’s good to do those things; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
But for me, I was making this for myself for fun.
Figuring out design issues is fun for me.”
“It was fun, as well, in a different way.”
“That was great,” LocalThunk says.
“That’s my ideal vacation.”
They needed to move.
Their existing job didn’t allow remote work, so they had to quit.
They had some money saved up.
The game’s core gameplay loop already felt addictive in its incomplete state.
Why not finishBalatro"to put on a resume" for a future job somewhere?
“That’s when things started to pick up more.
To be honest with you, I didn’t do any of the marketing things that I should have.
I still haven’t emailed anyone to play the game!”
LocalThunk reflects on that initial positive feedback as a hard-to-fathom combination of happy work and dumb luck.
Not just the concept."
Their sense of “impostor syndrome” only began to emerge once positive feedback poured in.
I don’t think I could do that again if I tried.
“What I mean is, that original idea was…
I put no thought into it.
I lucked into it.
Make a game in three days, see if the concept works.
I didn’t do any of that.
I just started working on something that was like, ‘That would probably be fun.'”
Humility is LocalThunk’s throughline, not shyness or reluctance.
Having played the game for hours already, I was riveted to learn LocalThunk’s process and logic.
“I also say ‘no’ a lot.
“There are some ideas I have that would be fun to explore.
I do see myself working on this for some time.”
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