At the beginning of 2024, an indie game stormed the Steam charts rapidly and conquered the hearts of millions of players. It was created by just one developer.
Which game is it about? We are talking about Balatro. The game was released on February 20, 2024 and had over 35,000 players in the 24-hour peak after a short time (via steamdb.com).
It now has around 98 % positive reviews on Steam and thus receives the rating “extremely positive”. Balatro was also convincing at the Game Awards and cleared rows of prices (via the Thegameaawards.com). You can get the game for € 13.99.
What is Balatro about? Balatro is a so-called poker roguelike. You play illegal poker leaves with 150 special joker cards that you can combine in countless variants. The game offers the top builder and collective card elements, which you can use in a campaign mode with 8 difficulty levels and daily challenges.
In your matches you earn points that you can output for cards and upgrades and thus improve your deck. So you can master ever more difficult challenges and create decks with exciting tricks.
Behind the development of the game there is not only an interesting story, but the whole thing also originated from the creative work of a single person.
Trailer for the Roguelike Poker game Balatro from Localthunk
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“I prefer to write properly shitty code and draw stupid playing cards. That is what I enjoy about it. ”
Who is behind Balatro? Behind Balatro is a single developer called “Localthunk”. He had a lot of vacation left at the end of 2023. So it happened that he took a vacation for about a month, as he reports in an interview with thelogic.co:
“I had saved about a month of vacation during my work and had to take it at the end of the year. So I basically had the entire December free. And in Saskatchewan it is pretty cold in December and you can’t do much. ”
That was the birth of the now so successful Balatro project. In the first year, Localthunk developed the game as a hobby project in addition to work. However, when he had to give up his full -time job, he wanted to concentrate on the development of Balatro for a few months. It was intended as a piece in his portfolio, which he could use for future applications.
A short time after he had set up the page in the Steam shop, the first of many companies contacted him to bring out his game for him. In the end he decided on the London publisher Playstack because he felt like he was understood.
Localthunk, however, attributes less to happiness that his game became such a “viral hit”:
I think it’s like everything. You have to be prepared, and if you do the work, hopefully it will be a success.
He also spoke of the fact that the development was partially lonely, so without a team with which you could celebrate progress. Nevertheless, he also prefers to tackle the next project alone: “I don’t like to lead people. I prefer to write properly shitty code and draw stupid playing cards. That is what I enjoy about it. “
“The game sucked out my soul, it’s so good”
What do fans say about it? Fans who have read the interview once again share their admiration for Localthunk and his game Balatro on Reddit:
In the past, developer Localthunk has often collected sympathy points in the community. The background story of his success is likely to be involved. Previously, the developer had chosen his favorite game in a lovable way and was celebrated by the fans: a award -winning developer chose the game of the year and the community loves everything about it