What a Save!
Indie phenomenon Balatro beat off all-comers to be crowned PCG’s 2024 GOTY, and developer LocalThunk recently marked just over a year since release by sharing the “Balatro timeline” of the game’s development.
It’s a detailed, dramatic and in parts deeply amusing account of how “some kind of project” called CardGame began in December 2021, then the highs and lows of indie development: Friends getting hooked, the search for a publisher, the endless doubts.
LocalThunk has now returned to flesh-out some parts of the timeline, including the moment in March 2022 when he abandoned development a few months in. Writing on Bluesky, the developer credits their return to working on the game to one thing: The Internet was out.
“The reason I went back to making Balatro 3 months after I essentially gave it up in March 2022 was because I was bored but the internet was out so I couldn’t play Rocket League,” writes LocalThunk.
“If I recall correctly the first thing I worked on when I picked it back up was the rotational/scale jiggling juice effect when you mouse over playing cards or when they score.”
As the first reply to the latter notes, “ah, the most important part.” Seriously: I would put a hefty chunk of Balatro’s appeal down to how good the jiggle effect is when you mouse over cards. Just thinking about it makes me want to do it. The fact that work re-started because LocalThunk couldn’t play Rocket League, though, is one of those asides that’s just delicious. How different the world could’ve been but for an internet outage.
The full story of Balatro’s development is well worth the read, especially as the game neared its full release, and LocalThunk’s bewilderment at how well it’s received becomes clear. There’s a great moment where he talks about the queasy thrill of waiting for the early reviews to land.
“The first big review is from PC Gamer: 91. Playstack and I are on a call when they break the news to me, and I can tell they are pretty shocked. I am shocked. That rating doesn’t make any sense.”
As anyone who’s played Balatro will tell you, that 91 actually makes a lot of sense. But one of the sweet things about LocalThunk’s account of development is that the game’s success was a genuine surprise to its maker. “This was meant for just a few of my friends and yet somehow all these strangers chose to buy it.” Yep: Over five million of us so far.
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