Balatro creator was "shocked" at his poker roguelike's high review scores: "I don’t think I would have rated Balatro higher than an 8 and I made the damn thing"

Balatro Joker art
(Image credit: Playstack / LocalThunk)

It can sometimes be difficult to accurately assess your work, and the task becomes even more arduous when you're working on an entertaining poker roguelike game. For example, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Balatro creator LocalThunk was stunned to see such high review scores pouring in after the game releas🥀ed in 2024.

"February 19th rolls around," he recalls in a detailed timeline . "The 19th is the review embargo day, and [publisher] Playstack did a truly exc𓄧eptional job getting this game in the hands of traditional media to write their reviews before launch."

"I didn't know what to exp⭕ect," LocalThun♒k continues. "This was a pretty weird game after all. Average ratings of 6 or 7?"

Nope. Balatro was quickly🐻 met with jackpot numbers across the board, shooting up to a 90 score on Metacritic, wꦇhich it has since maintained.

"I am shocked. That rating doesn't make any sense," LocalThunk remembers thinking. "I don't think I would 🌃have rate💯d Balatro higher than an 8, and I made the damn thing."

The game gathered 208,401 wis🎶hlists on Sꦜteam by its launch day, but LocalThunk couldn't get it out of his head that his avalanche of success would all come crashing down.

"I fully anticipated the sky to fall and for me to be working 24/7 to fix the inಌevitable disaster," he says, remembering that h📖e was gearing up to be "patching like a madman" for a full month after Balatro's launch.

"I told my partner that I won’t be making any plans until the end of൩ March," he remembers.

But LocalThunk was underestimating himself again; Balatro launched with negligible bugs, and its 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:first few hours generated over $600,000, so LocalThunk had no choice but to reward himself with some burgers and champagne. If there's one thing that's easy to predict, it's one's inevitable need for burgers and cha⛄mpagne.

Balatro dev says solitaire exists "at the peak of game culture" and was debatably "the most important" inspiration for his poker roguelike.

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding he🍨r doll collection while watching Saw mo🦩vies one through 11.

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