Evidently boosted by The Game Awards spotlight, poker roguelike hit Balatro has sold another 1.5 million copies since the start of December to rocket past 5 million copies sold, not counting Apple Arcade plays. Developer Localthunk rang in the news with a message that will sound familiar to anyone who's been following the indie game ambassador: buy more indie games, they're cool. (It's true.)
"The last few weeks have been pretty wild," the official Balatro Twitter account said. "To everyone who picked up Balatro after seeing it at [The Game Awards], we hope you're having an amazing time with it! If this is your first time picking up an indie title, try to make it a habit! There's some amazing stuff out there!"
Wout van Halderen of Balatro publisher Playstack put the numbers into perspective: "We hit 3.5M in the first week of December, this is where we are today. Love it when hard work pays off!"
When Balatro was first nominated at The Game Awards, Localthunk was quick to champion his fellow indies. "I feel uncomfortable treating the nominations and awards for Balatro as 'my' awards or nominations because I feel like my game just happens to be the current face of this beautiful and passionate corner of the industry," he wrote in November. "I just happen to be the lucky one to be propped up." His post concluded with a "go support an indie" rallying cry featuring Arco, Ballionaire, Nova Drift, Animal Well, StarVaders, Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, and Rack and Slay.
Many of these games also appeared in Localthunk's own personal "Golden Thunk" awards, with cryptic Metroidvania Animal Well taking the top honor for being so good that it made the wildly successful dev "feel like an imposter in this industry."
"These indies deserve some more attention!" he added in a January post.
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 thought it would be "a fun little project."
