Poker-themed roguelike hit Balatro conquered everyone’s lunch breaks, train commutes and toilet trips for a reason. Its loop of ever-expanding high scores sent it all the way up best-sellers lists, with millions of people having bought the game made primarily by one person: LocalThunk. But despite how popular it’s been with everyone else, the indie developer has only just fully beat his own game, more than a year after it first released.
“Beat every deck on every difficulty! I still want to 100% the game, I’m having a really great time and I think I know my game a lot better now,” LocalThunk wrote in a social media post. To put that into perspective, there are 15 decks in the game and eight difficulty levels that add hair-pulling modifiers each time. He essentially claimed victory over 120 runs that got progressively harder, a feat I’ve not managed to do with one deck after about a dozen hours.
If you’re interested in how he got so far and want some tips, he also shared his build with the world. “Roast me”
“I also think all this time playing has killed any negative emotions I had toward it after all the stress from launch,” LocalThunk continued. The Balatro developer recently opened up about the emotional struggles of working on a game by yourself for years, only to have hundreds of other people chime in seemingly over night, and the long hours he put himself through to get the game ready in time for launch. But it’s nice to hear most of those “negative emotions” have fallen away.
Balatro creator hits back at AI art spread on the roguelike’s subreddit: “I don’t use it in my game, I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds”
