The developer of the Balatro game, reminiscent of poker, made a staggering $1 million within the first 8 hours of its release. Surprisingly, he confesses he’s not a poker player.
LocalThunk, the solitary creator behind the widely acclaimed Balatro card game, revealed that the project broke even just an hour after its launch, and within seven hours, it generated its first million dollars. According to him, Balatro isn’t fundamentally built on poker.
However, the term “poker” frequently surfaces in the project’s description. “Balatro is a poker-inspired game in the rogue-like genre, focusing on deck-building, creating powerful synergies, and scoring big wins,” as stated on the game’s Steam page.
In addition to the regular poker card deck, Balatro features:
- 150 jokers, each with unique abilities.
- 15 decks with various selectable modifiers.
- 5 potential variations for each joker with additional abilities.
- 22 Tarot card variants that can enhance regular cards.
- 11 planet cards to elevate the level of poker combinations.
- 32 voucher cards offering constant enhancements for the ongoing game.
The essence of the game lies in discovering new cards and improving your collection.
“Combine poker combinations with unique jokers and create diverse synergies and decks. Earn enough chips to beat cunning blinds, uncover hidden bonus hands and decks. Every advantage will come in handy to reach the boss blind, beat the final bet, and claim victory,” describes the developer about the gameplay.
Following its release on February 20, 2024, Balatro quickly became a hit. Currently, the game boasts 89 points on the Metacritic review aggregator and 91 on OpenCritic. On Steam, Balatro has garnered over 10,000 player reviews, with 97% positive feedback. Many players and journalists note how addictive the game is.
Within three days of release, publisher PlayStack announced that Balatro had sold 250,000 copies. In a comment to GamesIndustry.biz, the publisher highlighted that Balatro’s sales exceeded the $1 mark just eight hours after release.
“I poured my heart and soul into this game, hoping to share it with a few friends and loved ones, but seeing so many people sharing and enjoying this strange creation was incredibly overwhelming. I cannot express my gratitude to Balatro fans and PlayStack for making this possible,” said the game’s creator, LocalThunk.
He also revealed that the project is actually based on a game called Big Two, not poker.
“Funnily enough, I don’t play poker at all. The game is more akin to Big Two, where poker combinations are used, but you play them from your own combination of eight or 13 cards, etc.,” LocalThunk told PC Gamer.
He decided that poker would be a great thematic anchor that many people could use as a starting point to understand some of the mechanisms of this game.
“I could use poker terminology, some visual effects like blinds, antes, chips, and so on to make it all more cohesive. But I don’t play poker. I’m not very interested in poker,” LocalThunk explained.
According to him, he made the poker reference to avoid a slew of gaming terms and admitted that he doesn’t play games very often.
“When I was creating my game, I wanted to make it so that there were no hit points, no damage, you’re not attacking anything. It’s almost like solitaire,” the developer says.
