A solo developer quit his IT job, spent two and a half years building a game about playing cards, and ended up with something that consumed 11,000 collective years of player time by October 2024.
Balatro sold over 5 million copies and swept awards season, picking up Game of the Year at the 25th Game Developers Choice Awards.
The premise sounds simple enough: score points by making poker hands. The execution turned out to be something else entirely.
LocalThunk, the game’s creator, built Balatro alone. He has since bought a house with his partner and described game development as “basically my entire life now.”
The project earned nominations and wins at The Game Awards 2024, including Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game. It was also nominated for Game of the Year, marking the first time a solo project received that honor.
What Poker Logic Owes to Arcade Cabinets?
Card games built on ranked hands have appeared in video games for decades. Developers pulled from blackjack, rummy, and standard poker formats to create minigames inside larger titles or standalone apps focused on playing poker games against AI opponents.
Balatro borrows from this lineage but strips away betting and bluffing entirely, leaving only the hand rankings as a scoring skeleton.
The result resembles something closer to puzzle games like Tetris or match-three titles than traditional card sims. Runs depend on recognizing patterns and stacking modifiers rather than reading opponents.
LocalThunk cited Big Two and Luck Be a Landlord as direct inspirations, both games where card sequencing matters more than table psychology.
Stripping Poker Down to Its Bones
Balatro removes almost everything people associate with poker. There are no opponents to read, no bets to call, no rivers to fear.
What remains is the hierarchy of hands: high card at the bottom, royal flush at the top. Players draw cards and submit valid poker hands to score points against target thresholds called Blinds.
Beating a Blind earns money. Money buys Jokers, Tarot cards, and Planet cards from shops between rounds. Jokers provide permanent bonuses and multipliers that carry through the run.
Tarot cards offer single-use effects that can modify individual cards or the deck itself. Planet cards level up specific hand types, increasing their base scores.
The core loop stays consistent. Draw, discard, play a hand, repeat. The variation comes from how modifiers stack and interact.
Multiplication as a Game Mechanic
Most roguelikes grant power through new abilities or stat increases. Balatro grants power through multiplication. A basic pair might score 20 points at the start of a run. With the right combination of Jokers, that same pair can score tens of thousands.
This creates a distinct rhythm. Early rounds feel slow and constrained. Players scrape together enough points to survive each Blind while hunting for Jokers that synergize.
Mid-game runs accelerate as multipliers begin stacking. Late-game runs become absurd, with scores climbing into figures that would make a calculator sweat.
The math stays visible. Players can see each modifier contribute to the final score, watching numbers climb in real time. This transparency makes successful builds feel earned rather than random.
Building a Deck That Breaks Itself
Deckbuilding in Balatro works differently than in games like Slay the Spire. Players start with a standard 52-card deck and modify it over time. Tarot cards can transform suits, duplicate cards, or remove unwanted draws. Some Jokers reward playing specific suits or ranks, encouraging players to reshape their decks around those conditions.
A strong run often involves reducing the deck to a tight collection of cards that consistently produce high-scoring hands. A player might aim for a deck filled with aces and face cards, guaranteeing full houses and four-of-a-kinds. Another might focus on a single suit to trigger flush bonuses repeatedly.
The decisions feel meaningful because they compound. Removing a 7 of clubs at round 3 changes draw probability for every hand that follows.
Why Players Keep Returning?
Runs in Balatro last between 20 and 40 minutes. This length sits in a sweet spot for roguelikes. Long enough to build attachment to a run, short enough to start another immediately after failure.
The game also communicates progress well. Unlockable Jokers, new deck types, and challenge modes provide goals beyond winning a single run. Players who finish the base game find harder modifiers waiting. Players who master those find leaderboards and self-imposed restrictions.
Over 1 million copies sold within the first month suggests word spread quickly. The remaining 4 million came after, as players recommended it to others or encountered it through awards coverage.
A Familiar Framework Made Foreign
Poker hands provide an entry point that requires no tutorial. Most players already know a flush beats a straight and a straight beats three of a kind. Balatro uses that existing knowledge as a foundation, then builds something unrecognizable on top of it.
The game does not teach poker strategy. It teaches its own systems, which happen to share vocabulary with poker. A player who memorizes pot odds gains nothing here. A player who learns which Jokers multiply with each other gains everything.
LocalThunk took a familiar structure and rebuilt it into a scoring puzzle wrapped in roguelike progression. The result sold millions and won awards.
It also consumed 11,000 years of collective human time, which says something about what happens when multiplication meets card games.
Conclusion
Balatro’s success did not come from reinventing cards, but from rethinking what makes them compelling in a game context.
By stripping poker down to its rankings and rebuilding progression around visible, compounding multipliers, it created a loop that rewards learning, experimentation, and restraint.
The familiarity of poker hands lowers the barrier to entry, while the depth of its systems keeps players returning. In doing so, Balatro demonstrates how a well-understood mechanic, when reframed with intention, can power one of the most addictive roguelike experiences of its generation.
FAQs
Is Balatro a poker game?
Balatro uses poker hand rankings, but it does not play like traditional poker. There is no betting, bluffing, or opponent psychology. It functions as a roguelike scoring puzzle.
Why is Balatro considered a roguelike?
Each run is procedurally varied, progression resets after failure, and long-term unlocks provide meta-progression, all core roguelike traits.
How long does a typical Balatro run last?
Most runs take between 20 and 40 minutes, making it easy to replay while still allowing meaningful progression.
What makes Balatro so addictive?
The visible stacking of multipliers, short run length, and constant build experimentation create a loop that encourages “one more run” behavior.
Do you need poker knowledge to play Balatro?
Basic familiarity with poker hand rankings helps, but deep poker strategy knowledge is unnecessary and does not provide an advantage.
