After winning two awards, Balatro dev reveals they only started making their hit roguelike "because I had a few weeks of vacation to burn" and only thought it would be "a fun little project"

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Little did they know how much we'd all love it

Balatro Joker card
(Image credit: Playstack)

Balatro seemingly came out of nowhere and instantly became everyone's most-played game on Steam this year, and it turns out creator LocalThunk started it as a quick project to do during some time off work.

Balatro won the Critics' Choice Breakthrough Award at the Golden Joystick Awards yesterday, which is given to the game that surprised the most. It also picked up a well-deserved win for Best Indie Game. Balatro's roguelike take on poker certainly was unexpected, and although it took me a while to unlearn real poker so I could fully enjoy it, I've now spent an embarrassing amount of hours with it. Our games editor, Oscar, swears he has never played it during a work meeting, but I smell lies.

Following the big night, LocalThunk reveals on Twitter that "Almost exactly three years ago, I started making a weirdo card game on my laptop because I had a few weeks of vacation to burn and thought it'd be a fun little project for me and my friends." 

We already know just how low their expectations for Balatro were, as the game does not occupy a prestigious place on LocalThunk's hard drive. "My actual production project folder is called 'CardGame' and is still in my 'Learning' directory if that tells you anything about the expectations I had for the game," they said.

Obviously, Balatro took more than a few weeks to become what we know and love today, but its origin is a testament to what can be done with a cool idea and some time and effort.

As well as its wins at the Golden Joysticks, Balatro has been nominated five times at The Game Awards. It could win: Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game. That's right, Balatro is on mobile, too, so you really can't escape it anymore.

If you can tear yourself away from Balatro, why not check out some of the next upcoming indie games that could be your new favorites?

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.