LocalThunk

LocalThunk is the pseudonymous one-man developer of Balatro from Canada.

Development for Balatro began in December 2021, during LocalThunk's vacation from his workplace. The initial name for the project was "CardGame", and the first prototype was made. Although it still lacked most of the components of the game today, it had the Chip x Mult mechanic. He found inspiration from Luck Be a Landlord after watching Northernlion streams, which helped shape his ideas further. LocalThunk then made a conscious effort not to play other roguelike games, so he couldn't be directly or indirectly influenced further and ensure his own unique vision on the genre.

In the following months, features like Jokers, the Shop, and Boss Blinds began being added. The working title for the project was now "Joker Poker". He then took a break during March 2022 to reduce burnout and take time for his well being. Development resumed in May 2022, and ramped up, leading him to consider a Steam release. Around June 2022, the game begins to resemble its finished state. After receiving enthusiastic feedback from one of his friends who played the game, LocalThunk increased the scope with features like a tutorial, controller support, and sound effects.

In January 2023, LocalThunk became a full time game developer. In the next month, he would share a build that now had Vouchers with his friends that would become the version that was released on Steam afterwards. In March 2023, he commissioned Luis Clemente to make the soundtrack for the game, and settled on the name "Balatro".

In May 2023, LocalThunk improved Balatro's controller implementation using Slay the Spire as inspiration. By June, the game began gaining significant notoriety from streamers, YouTubers, and indie channels. ^[1]

• On 20 June 2025, LocalThunk obtained the Completionist++ achievement.^[2]
• LocalThunk's pseudonym derives from the keyword "local" used to define variables in Lua and "Thunk", a common variable name in his partner's projects.^[3]
• LocalThunk has his own "Golden Thunk" award, and the winner for Game of the Year 2024 was Animal Well.^[4]
  • The runner ups were: Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, Arco, Nova Drift, Ballionaire, and Mouthwashing.
• Originally Balatro was going to have 120 Jokers. This changed after a miscommunication with Playstack mentioning 150 Jokers, resulting in LocalThunk creating 30 more.^[5]
• Balatro is greatly inspired by Klondike solitaire, and LocalThunk even describes it as "jazz solitaire".^[6]
• With the help of his publisher Playstack, he was able to get Balatro reclassified by PEGI as 12+ instead of 18+. The initial rating was due to the poker and gambling elements of the game.^[7][8]

• LocalThunk's blog
• LocalThunk on X (formerly Twitter)
• LocalThunk on BlueSky
• LocalThunk Reddit account