Deckbuilding roguelikes have become a top-tier genre in recent years. Slay the Spire has undoubtedly been the king of the genre since it launched into early access back in 2017, but the arrival of Balatro in 2024 definitely made the contention for the throne a lot more crowded. Balatro arrived out of nowhere and took the world by storm, being a bona fide game of the year contender among behemoths like Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Dragon’s Dogma 2.
But that overnight success came after almost three years of hard work. And just over one year after the game launched, the developer Localthunk released a diary detailing the development of the game, from its beginnings in December 2021 through to the game launching in February 2024.
There’s a litany of interesting details scattered within, but there’s a really good tidbit in one of the early logs back in December 2021, saying, “I also made a very conscious effort not to play any more roguelike games starting now. Localthunk added, “this was because making games is my hobby, releasing them and making money from them is not, so naively exploring roguelike design (and especially deckbuilder design, since I had never played one before) was part of the fun for me. I wanted to make mistakes, I wanted to reinvent the wheel, I didn’t want to borrow tried-and-true designs from existing games.”
Around a year and a half later, however, in the May 2023 entry, there’s a note in the diary that simply reads, “I downloaded Slay the Spire and played it for the first time. Holy s***. Now that is a game.”
Despite not wanting previous deckbuilders to influence their work on Balatro, five months later, in October 2023, another note on Slay the Spire appeared, saying, “The biggest addition is the inclusion of a sort of ‘ascension’ system. This is from Slay the Spire (see? Told you I’d steal from it) but I think it was a super cool way to add difficulty and give players a sort of checklist to work through.” So even if Balatro has become arguably the biggest deckbuilder sensation of all time, it has a bit of Slay the Spire to thank.
Elsewhere in the Balatro developer diary, Localthunk revealed that the game’s critical acclaim came as a surprise, saying, "I don’t think I would have rated Balatro higher than an 8, and I made the damn thing."
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