Balatro won the Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2024, triumphing over nominees like Wuthering Waves and Zenless Zone Zero. Moreover, the title also won awards in the Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game categories. Balatro features a single-player title that mixes poker-themed gameplay mechanics with roguelike deck-building. The title saw a massive success in less than a year, amassing over 3.5 million copies in sales as of December 2024.
That said, this article details everything we know about Balatro's developer and its development.
Everything we know about Balatro
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Balatro was developed by a single person from Canada, LocalThunk, initiated over two-and-a-half years ago. It is based on the real-world Cantonese card game — Big Two — which is one of the most popular pastimes across Southeast Asia and East Asia. In BigTwo, a player wins by playing all the cards on their hands.
LocalThunk also took inspiration from Luck Be A Landlord game that features slot machine-themed roguelike gameplay mechanics. In Luck Be A Landlord, players must reach a set target value within a limited number of spins.
During its initial development, the title was one of the multiple games LocalThunk shared with his friends. A year before its release, he began actively working on the game and uploaded an early build to Steam. Multiple streamers played the title and uploaded related content to their channel, giving it huge publicity ahead of its release.
After its huge exposure, LocalThunk made some changes based on player’s feedback and first released the title on February 20, 2024, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The title was ported to macOS on March 1 and Android and iOS ports were launched on September 26, 2024.
The players’ objective is to defeat various Boss Blinds with strong poker hands and score the specified point. Players choose a deck with unique effects and begin their run. Each run offers multiple Antes, divided into three rounds with increasing difficulty, from Small and Big to the Boss Blind.
They must clear all Blinds or skip in some cases in each Ante for a successful run. The Boss Blinds can also debuff the players’ cards.
Balatro was also nominated in the Game of the Year and Best Game Direction categories at The Game Awards 2024.