The creator of ‘Balatro’ believed that he was going to sell ten copies and return to his normal job

It has been the big surprise of 2024 so far: ‘Balatro’ seemed to come out of nowhere but this poker-based roguelike has already sold one million copies, allowing its sole developer, Localthunk, to dream of a future in the industry. It’s not easy to break through, hundreds of games are released every day, and only a few achieve what this title has accomplished. And the creator didn’t even think it would achieve anything at all.

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Return to work

In his Twitter account, Localthunk has commented on his real expectations when launching ‘Balatro’: “A year ago, I was getting ready to release my little weird game on Steam and look for an IT job again. I put up the game’s page in May and was hoping to sell maybe ten copies. It’s been a crazy year. I’m very grateful to be able to do what I love as a career now”.

Currently, ‘Balatro’ has over 30,000 extremely positive reviews on Steam, and word of mouth continues to spread, far surpassing its initial market niche. In fact, what is surprising is that it continues to regularly be among the top ten most played on Steam, alongside titles like ‘Dragon’s Dogma 2’, ‘Like a dragon: Infinite wealth’, or ‘Persona 3 Reload’, with the difference being that it has spent a tiny fraction of what those games cost.

For the future, Localthunk is already thinking about possible DLC as well as mobile versions for which, it believes, only a few things of the user experience should be touched to make it perfect. A new developer has been born. Now we just need to know if it has many more games inside it.

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