After winning big at The Game Awards and taking hours of our time in 2024, Balatro creator reveals their "most productive night" resulted in one of the game's most satisfying features

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It's the little things that make a big difference

A screenshot from the Balatro: Friends of Jimbo reveal trailer, showing a card with The Witcher's Geralt on the front.
(Image credit: LocalThunk / CD Projekt Red)

2024 has been the year of Balatro, and solo developer LocalThunk says the feature they're most proud of is the iconic and satisfying flame effect that appears when you get a hand that beats an ante's score requirement.

I remember the first time I got a decent hand and saw the flames, I was so confused. I didn't know if I'd screwed up and my score was going to burn away into nothing or what. But then I noticed my hand was worth more than the total ante score and the pieces started clicking into place. This was a good thing, a great thing.

Turns out, it only took LocalThunk one night to make the effect, and they dub it "the most productive night of my life." In the GIF, you can see the flames rise from small and centred on the score boxes to roaring, erupting all across the boxes and causing the numbers within them to shake.

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It's all the little sound effects and jiggles that make Balatro such a sensorial delight to play. Every time you get a great hand, the game provides you with such wonderfully kinetic feedback to encourage you to reach for those high scores again. It's why I keep playing the game on endless mode even after I've beaten ante eight, I just want to feel more of those satisfying effects. No wonder our team has been (not) playing it during meetings and it won three times at The Game Awards.

There's still more to come in Balatro. There's a huge update planned for 2025, and industry darling Ben Starr has become the live-action version of Jimbo the joker, disturbingly munching on bananas to advertise new skins in the game.

While you're here, check out some of the other best indie games of 2024 you may have missed. If you're off work for the holidays, now is the perfect time to get stuck in.

Issy van der Velde
Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.