Balatro Creator LocalThunk Talks Inspirations and Jokers | Game Maker's Notebook Podcast

Hey everyone, I'm Trent Kusters, co-founder and Studio Director of League of Geeks, and this is the Game Maker's Notebook. Today, I've had the distinct privilege of speaking with Balatro creator, Local Thunk. We dive into the podcast like we usually do, talking about his first memory and games, but we immediately get on to how he used to make little games and sims that really only his friends ever played. We talk about lessons he learned from those projects, whether it be scoping, the challenges of UI implementation, or when one of them is done and it's time to move on to the next one.

Then we get into Balatro, and we talk about how it was inspired by the classic card game Big 2, and how he would play that with his friends. We talk about how the power of the concept of a card, like this idea of a playing card, is almost a universally cultural concept. We talk about how he implemented systems as he went in his design process, how he balanced their interaction, and this idea of ruthless design, as he called it, where removing entire systems would often make the game more fun and more enjoyable.

We talk about community feedback and the critical role that it played throughout his development. We talk about his success at launch, critically, culturally, commercially, and how he actually took a step back from the public sphere shortly after launch and put boundaries in place to protect his physical and mental health. We talk about his relationship with Playstack, how he selected that publisher, and the various challenges that they went through and worked through together in releasing the game. One of which was the European ratings board PEGI conflating Balatro with gambling imagery. And I won't spoil it, but he also has come up with a pretty novel way to ensure that Balatro won't ever be used in a gambling setting ever. So do keep your ears pricked for that bit.

And then we wrap up talking about his favorite Jokers, whether aesthetic or because of their gameplay effects, how his personal experiences in his day-to-day life influenced the Joker's creation. This is Local Thunk's first commercially released video game, and the fact that he can articulate his design and development process and his creative discipline at a level of some of these other giants that we speak to is absolutely commendable. So whether you're a Balatro addict or you're just absolutely enthusiastic about game development, and that's why you listen to the Game Maker's Notebook, this episode's going to be a treat. And so without further ado, here's Local Thunk.

[Music] Enjoy.

Let's say hello to Jima. He's just a joker in any other game. He has left out the deck and has no value. But in Balatro, Jima and other Jokers upgrade your poker hands, allowing you to create powerful card synergies. Every run requires a new strategy. Harness these Jokers to their full potential and optimize your deck to defeat tricky enemy boss blinds. Wield the mystic power of Tarot cards to enhance your individual playing cards and upgrade the poker hands you play. With Planet cards and vouchers, you will need all the help you can get to survive each round. Do you like shiny cards? Balatro has multiplier cards, lucky cards, glass cards, bonus cards, steel cards, and stone cards. Keep an eye out for cards with a golden seal. Collect stronger additions for each Joker, like foil, holographic, polychrome, and the elusive negative power. Balatro never underestimate a Joker.

[Music]

Okay, Local Thunk, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I like 50% of the world's population have been playing Balatro for, I don't know, how many weeks now? Or should I say, it's been playing me. Whenever my Steam Deck is in line of sight, it's, I'm drawn to it. Whenever it's in a room nearby, I can feel it burning, like, like the Ring of Mordor calling me. Um, congratulations on your success. The virality of this thing's just been amazing.

Yeah, thank you. Um, I feel like it hasn't quite sunk in yet, like all these months later. So it's still kind of surreal.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Now, I noticed you did a couple of interviews and things like that, uh, post-release, but then you kind of went dark for a little while and took a break, or at least a break from the comms. Were you, were you focusing on the mobile build? Did you sort of step away for a bit in the madness of things to soak it all in?

Um, it was mostly mobile stuff. Um, it got really busy in the middle there for, in the middle of the summer. Um, there, I wear a lot of hats, as you can imagine. Um, I do most of the work. I have someone helping me with, with porting things, but, um, it was good for me to just focus on, I think, the task at hand. So, yeah.

Totally makes sense. David Lynch has this fantastic interview clip where, um, he's like, "Every time I make a movie, people are like, asking me about the movie and they're like, 'What do you have to say about the movie?'" And he's like, "The movie is what I have to say about it. That's me talking about the movie." Yeah, yeah. I feel that.

Yeah. Well, hey, thanks for joining us. Um, really, really glad to have you on. But I wanted, I do want to take it back to how you first got into games and sort of chart your course all the way to Balatro, because, you know, I mean, Balatro is one of those games that could seem like an overnight success, but I know that there are a few things sort of helped along the way and that there were stepping stones before Balatro. So let's take it all the way back and let's start with your first memory of video games, or the first time that video games kind of changed your brain as a youngster. Do you have any recollections?

Yeah, I did like video games a lot as a child. I was, um, definitely scolded a few, few times for, uh, being on the computer instead of reading when I was young. So, um, the, I think the first time time I can really remember playing a game was, uh, when I was a kid playing Midtown Madness on our, like, family PC. If you haven't heard of Midtown Madness, it's like, uh, it's like a weird racing game, kind of like GTA, but you can't, like, get out of the car. So it's not as, you know, gratuitously violent or anything.

Well, yeah, it's a Rockstar game as well. A lot of people, they play it, they don't realize too, that's why it's kind of got those GTA vibes. I, I'm learning this live right now, you guys see?

Yeah, I mean, I was, I didn't know as, like, a, you know, a six-year-old playing that game what it was. You're like, "I believe this is the developer, Rockstar Games." Very discerning.

Yeah, yeah. Um, that was definitely my first, like, big memory of me playing a game and wanting, like, being excited about going back to it. And it was, I played it as kind of like a sandbox experience, just like playing in this world. I didn't really race very much in it. I wasn't trying to, like, beat a campaign or anything. So, yeah, that's, that's probably my first memory.

Hell yeah. And do you remember, sort of, as a youngster, when it kind of switched from playing video games into a hobby? How early did you get into game development?

Oh, that was much, much, much later. Um, interesting. Yeah. So I, you know, when I was a kid, I played a lot of video games, but the video games that I played were pretty basic. I think, I think they were like, I definitely am not as, like, hardcore as a lot of other devs from stories that I hear, but like, I was playing, you know, Halo and Call of Duty and, you know, like Guitar Hero. I was a huge fan of that game. Um, but I wasn't making games at that time, nor did I know anything about coding or, uh, making, like, art assets for in-game or anything like that. I was pretty creative as a child. I liked to do art a lot, um, like physical art. Um, and so that's probably, like, the closest fact-simile type hobby that I had. But I didn't really start getting into proper game development until I was in university.

Oh, cool, cool. Did you kind of wander into that, or do, what were you studying at university?

Well, to start with, I was studying, uh, industrial, or it's like industrial engineering or mechanical engineering, the program I was in, which is not computer-related, really, at all. Um, and partway through my degree, I took this computer science course, and I think we had to make some kind of a game in it. I can't remember exactly, maybe it was a simulation of something, and I got like totally hooked on it. Um, something about it was just, I don't know, it clicked with me, and I started doing it in my spare time all the time outside of university. So I'd frequently, you know, be up until like 4 in the morning working on either some kind of a little game or some kind of a little simulation, usually. Um, and then in my final year, uh, of school, I dropped out of engineering because I was like, "Yeah, this just isn't for me. I'm way more passionate about computer science," and I, I enrolled in computer science and got a degree in that instead.

Okay. Wow. Yeah, so you really kind of like pivoted there.

Yeah, yeah. And and these, like, little side projects I was working on were kind of the catalyst for that too. So, and I enjoyed, like, the final couple years of my school way more than my first few because of that. I was, I was following something I actually cared about.

So God, that's, yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Amazing how you can just stumble into something that you like genuinely like, adore, and love, and you're like, "Oh, maybe this should be the thing that I'm like, paying all this money to study and might do for the rest of my life in some way."

Yeah. And especially, like, people kind of talk to me about, they're like, "Oh, don't you ever think about going back and finishing your engineering degree?" Because it would take me like a year to get an engineering degree at this point. But I keep thinking, like, "Why?" You know? I picked the thing I want to do. It's not, I don't look at it like a waste of time. It's just, I know what I want to do now. So, um, so yeah, it's it's funny the story of how you get to where you are.

Yeah, totally, totally. Do you remember the sort of the moment that sort of inspired you getting stuck into these little kind of like sims or like what kind of was the sort of the light bulb moment or the, the little thread that you pulled on that sort of got you tinkering away at something?

I don't know. I feel like I was treating it almost like the first few programs I made. One of them was a game. It was like, I can't remember what the game's called. It's it's a really common word game that beginning programmers make, and it's where you have like a four-letter word. You have to change it to another four-letter word, but you can only flip one letter at a time.

Okay, cool. Um, I remember I made one of those. But most of the projects I was working on were like simulations of like cellular automata or like a temperature map simulation. And it almost felt like I was, I had an ant hill or like an ant farm, and I was controlling the parameters, and I could see immediately. I could see the results of like, little numbers that I was tweaking. Um, I think that part was really addictive for me, and I kind of held on to that for most other projects I've worked on since then. I'd say Balatro might be actually the exception to that, um, where there's no AI, there's nothing, there's no simulation, uh, of NPCs per se. Um, so it's it's quite different in that sense for me, because usually it's, yeah, it was kind of a way to create some kind of a world and watch it go.

Yeah. Well, you know, God, you've done that in some way, shape, or form, right? It's amazing. The, these strategy and like, you know, these, these deck builders and stuff, they are a simulation in some way, shape, or form, right? Like the, there's the, the constraining of both ends, or the, you know, the different things that you inject into it, and everything that will create different outcomes. It's, it's not surprising that's kind of led you down this path.

Yeah, yeah. There, there are some, I think, similarities for sure. Um, uh, as much as I, I think that some of the other projects I've worked on are more simulation. I have heard that a lot, how it's kind of like a Rube Goldberg experience, and you do kind of watch it go. So, like, who were you just making these games for yourselves, or did you have like, uh, was it, were you sharing it with your classmates at university, or?

It was mostly for me. Um, I, I did share it with friends. I like to, you know, I'd make a build of a game and I'd send the files on like Google Drive over to a friend and be like, "Hey, I made this. I thought you might find it interesting." Um, but for the most part, it really was for me because I liked making them. And actually, I think that's one of the surprising things to me is that I don't hear a lot of other devs tell me that story. Um, for people that I've talked to, uh, usually they knew they wanted to make a game and they wanted to release a game and they wanted to, you know, contribute to this rich industry that we're in. And I felt kind of like I didn't even know a lot of it existed. I think if I knew about it at the time, I probably would have been more interested in publishing some of these games to, like, Itch.io or Steam or something. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like I was kind of in my own little world for a long time.

It, yeah, that's kind of amazing in itself. I was the same for many years. It wasn't until I was like, even though I played video games, like the only thing I did as a kid was like, skateboard, did Taekwondo, and played video games. That's it. Like, and I, um, I just didn't realize at any point in time that you could really, that there was, it was possible to make them as a job. It sounds funny to say out loud, but like, I had some moment, and then when I did realize, I was like, "Oh, that's not for me. That's for like, super smart math geniuses or something," because I knew there was coding involved, and I never ID, a super smart math genius.

I think, I think that's honestly where I was coming from too, is I knew that it existed. I knew it was a job you could get, but I had heard all these stories about like, how hyper-competitive the industry is, which it is, and I thought like, "Oh, so there's no point. Like, there's no way that I could break into that." So I may as well just do this for me and not even bother. Like, not even, not even worry about it. Yeah. Um, so I, I, I completely understand where you're coming from from that. I think that's that's really what I was thinking the whole time too. So, yeah.

Well, hey, do you have any, like, tell us about some of the, give us like a, sort of a shout-out of a couple of or a few of these like little simulations or games that you think kind of really helped, you know, because as developers or as creators, you'll know this as an artist, right? You, the things that we make, they help develop our, our style and our creative voice and our artistic voice. Were there some games that you can think of that really sort of were watershed moments in regards to developing your own voice, because you've clearly arrived with Balatro, um, with a very distinctive creative voice as a developer?

Yeah, I do think there were some really important moments for me. I think a lot of moments of failure, which is really important too, but, um, the biggest for me was a game, uh, I can't even remember the name. It might not have had a name. It's probably called Map Game, if I'm being honest. Map Game or Math Game? Map, Map Game. Map Game. I'm a big geography nerd, or at least I was in university. And, um, I was watching, uh, videos of Europa Universalis, then I got into that game, and I wanted to make, like, a, that game, like, is notoriously very, there's a lot of systems, it's complicated. It's, and I have a very short attention span, so I felt like, "Oh, I want to make, like, a simple version of that game where you have, you know, countries, and you simulate their borders, and they go to war, and they have allies, and, um, they can have rebellions and create, you know, historically accurate countries of that region." And, um, and I spent, I spent so long on this game. I actually spent probably longer than I did on Balatro on this game.

Oh, wow. Probably three years. Years I worked on it.

And it was so much fun to make. It was, it was amazing. I love that game. I don't know if it's any fun. Um, but I mean, to me, the, the hobby is making games. It's not having had a game be made by me. It's, it's like the process of making games is so fun. And that was three years of me having, like, an amazing time in my, uh, as a hobby. So, um, that was really important for me because it kind of, what, what I think it taught me is that I need to go like, "Crank it up to 11." Get obsessed. Spend too much time working on a part of a game or a part of a project that you don't think anyone's really going to pay attention to, because not because that makes the game better, but because that's ultimately what's the most rewarding for me. Um, and I think I've held on to that in Balatro. I think there's a lot of things I did that with in Balatro as well. So, yeah. Yeah, that's the biggest one for sure. Um, just to shout out another one. Um, there's a game I used to play as a kid called Crokinole. It's, I believe it's a Canadian board game, um, where it's, it's kind of like shuffleboard, but smaller. You like flick a disc from the edge of a circle into like the middle of the circle, and it scores kind of like curling. It's hard to describe if you haven't played it before, but it's a very, like, physical, tactile, physics-based real-life game. And I made a version of that. Um, it was the first time I dabbled in like physics simulations, per se. And, um, I also was the first time I developed like an AI that could beat your ass if it's on like the highest difficulty. And that was a lot of fun too. I had a lot of fun making that. So, yeah, those are two that I wanted to shout out in particular.

Yeah, hell yeah. All right. Well, you mentioned, you know, something that we love on the podcast as well are failures, right? And the lessons that we learned from them. What was, you know, you worked on that game, Map Game, for three years. I'm sure that was pockmarked with failures along the way, right? Large and small. Are there any in particular that that come to mind?

Big lesson? Uh, yes. I think, uh, this is kind of a technical answer, maybe, but I think it's important for for game devs, and that's, um, I crashed and burned on implementing a UI. Um, I think any game dev can can resonate with this, that UI, UI is the hardest part of making a game. Holy crap. And I wasn't using a library for anything. I was trying to like implement it all myself. And so I, I wasn't, I wasn't using much for the rest of the game. And it's easy enough to make like a square on the screen into a different color, but then making it into a button that reacts the way you want it to every single time, and it displays information correctly, and that's, it's hard. It's like, really hard. So I never got it to work. I spent three years on that game, and I just like, I gave up on the UI, basically. So you kind of have to just know what's going on with it. Um, that was one failure. So I feel like I, when I started Balatro, I approached it from a, a UI-first perspective, like, learn, get this down 100%, and then you can, um, then it's easy to to, you know, design the game from there.

But, and when you say get this down 100%, do you mean like the, the technical infrastructure for setting up your UI, or do you mean wireframes and sort of having it, it sort of wireframed out?

No, not wireframe, because I feel like those are the kinds of things I change all the time. But getting the foundation of the in, like, yeah, the game infrastructure now, so I can modify it and I can add buttons easily and remove them easily and whatnot. Um, but also, like, I like making my own mistakes and not using like a library for some of these things because I know how everything works now, and I know I'm the only one to blame, so I know I'm the one that has to fix it too. Um, so, yeah, that was that was one of the failures I had in that game. Um, I think another one is, um, I, the scoping. I think every dev also has issues with scoping as well, but, um, I was trying to add like historically accurate countries that could pop up in every region of the world, and I got through North America, and I was like, "Oh my God, there is no shot I can do this for the rest of the planet." Um, like, it's going to take years for me to do this. What was I thinking? Um, but I already started, so I just kind of gave up on that part of it too, because it's like, you know, I'm not going to work on this for the next however long. But, um, something that I learned from my background in art is that if you're working on something and, well, for me at least, as a hobbyist, if you're working on something and it's not like bringing you joy anymore, and you're not, you're not having fun anymore, you have to let yourself give up. Let yourself fail. Move on to the next thing, because the next thing's going to be better.

Yeah. Interesting. So do you, do you have a, is there kind of a through line in your experiences with making these games that you, because I'm taking from what you've said that none of these kind of had commercial aspirations, right? Until Balatro. Like, you were just, yeah, yeah, you were just kind of, as you say, in it for the journey, not the destination. So I remember talking to Tynan and Zach Adams from Bay 12 Games, the creators of Dwarf Fortress, and they're, they were similar in many ways, and they would, you know, just make these games. And I was like, "How would you know when to step off them?" And they, they were like, "We, when we'd ran them into the ground, when we'd basically reached a complete design or technical dead end, and there was nothing left, and we had to abandon it, basically. Um, there was no more blood from that stone." Do you have a, is there a similar through line in when you found it's time to drop a concept, whether that be at three months or three years?

Uh, yeah, actually. I really like that answer, um, that they gave. Um, well, for me, like I mentioned before, um, the reason why I make games is because it's fun. The process of making games is really enjoyable for me. I like making games more than I like playing games. Um, so for me, I think it's kind of simple. Like, I stop working on a game when it's not fun to work on anymore, when I have another idea that's better, or when the vision is just like, "Yeah, this is about as far as I want it to go. It's good enough." Um, and I try not to make myself feel guilty about that, because I think if you make yourself feel guilty about it, then it, it adds a little barrier to starting the next thing. Yeah. Um, so, because I never had commercial aspirations for these things, I, I never had like a deadline or a timeline or a roadmap for what 100% looks like. So, uh, I think it was easy for me to stick to that ethos.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, and I mean, if you're in it for the journey, not the destination, what a fantastic metric to decide when to step onto the next thing. That's great. And I guess, you know, also it sounds like yourself, you're part of the journey for you, with in the discovery and the learning. And so if you're not enjoying it, I imagine that the growth or the learning that one experimental project can provide is kind of exhausted, right?

Yeah, yeah. Like, I think I would get pretty bored if I was working on the same exact thing over and over and over again for like, a decade. Um, that might not be true. Um, but I, I do think I need to have kind of a change of pace and like a new exciting idea to keep things fresh. Uh, so, yeah, definitely.

And are you, are you rolling your own engines for these games, or are you like, are you working out of Unity? Or?

I actually, I don't even know. It's one of the things I didn't check in my research here for.

Well, it's, it's a complicated answer because I think like the spectrum of "made it in an engine" and "made like made my own engine," it's like, it's not binary. I think it's kind of like a sliding scale. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I use a framework called LÖVE 2D.

Right. Wow. Heard that on. I'm familiar with it, but no one has ever mentioned that on this podcast.

Oh, yeah. It's not, it's not, there's not like a ton of games that are made with it commercially, but it's really popular with indie game dev jams, because it's pretty easy to get like a, a prototype off the ground with it. Um, I moved to that from like C++ because it was quicker for me to do the same kinds of things that I, and a similar level of control to what I used to have.

You're scripting in Lua with that, right?

Yes, exactly. I'm scripting in Lua, and, uh, which is a language I've totally fallen in love with too.

All right. Um, it's, I don't know. There's something special, but it's so idiosyncratic and weird in a lot of ways, but it's, I don't know, I love it.

Yeah, I remember when I first got started in video games, that was like the scripting language that our own proprietary one at the studio that I was working at was based off. It was, it was, yeah, a lot of fun scripting stuff.

Yeah, I think most people's experience with it is as a modding, like, they use that for modding in like Roblox and in World of Warcraft, and even like, um, Photoshop, I think, is all the scripts are written in Lua. So that's usually people's experience with it is like, as a tacked-on modding framework to some other game.

The chosen language of 13-year-olds and graphic designers around the world, exactly, exactly.

Uh, but I don't know, for me, it was, I didn't want to learn Unity or Unreal or whatever, 'cause I didn't want a big clunky IDE. Like I had background in a lot of this stuff already. I wanted like a low-level control. So I, I made like my own physics engine for the game, for example, just because I didn't want to, I didn't want to use someone else's. I thought it was like a fun challenge to try and make like realistic-looking and feeling physics in the game. So, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, congrats. It's, it's funny because you really struck that balance of, like, real, because, you know, uh, we, we developed Ouro, which obviously has like cards in play all the time. And, you know, like taking those cards, I remember out our, um, absolutely superbly talented tech director, Tom, like, in a day, whipped up like a, a shader that gets applied to the cards that just makes them look like they're fully in a 3D space. And it was one of those, you know, when a programmer goes off and does something, it just blows everyone's mind in the studio. Um, and you've managed, so, the reason why I say that anecdote is I know the difficulty of like trying to make something sort of have that physics feel to it, but the issues that you can run into with the real physics side of things, but having it be, because obviously a huge, huge quality of your game is the arcadey, punchy feel to it, um, so you struck a really great balance there. I mean, we haven't really got into Balatro, but I think there's a perfect segue into this in particular now that we're just chatting about it. Was there, was there, tell me about that sort of finessing of like the physics and the tactility of the game and, um, you know, maintaining that that arcadey feel to it, right?

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier something about how I wanted to crank it up to 11 for some things that I didn't think anyone else would care about. This is one of those things, and it just so happened that people cared about it. Um, I spent an absurd amount of time just like changing a formula a little tiny bit, running the game, mousing my cursor over a card, moving it around, seeing how it feels, going back and forth, and doing that like hundreds and hundreds of hours doing that kind of a thing, uh, just 'cause it like, it was so fun and satisfying to do that, and I was so motivated to make it as good as possible because it just felt, I don't know, it was so rewarding. The process of doing that was just so rewarding, and I think I really locked into the fact that a lot of those things in Balatro that I wanted to crank up to 11, like, that people resonate with, they also enjoy interacting with those things. So, um, that's why I did it, at least. I spent a long time on the physics because it was just, uh, it was a joy to kind of explore that that problem set myself.

Yeah. And it's amazing. Like, I will talk a little bit more about the late game later on, but just like what it adds and brings to the comprehension of the game at, you know, because obviously it, you have turned it up to 11. It feels so punchy when these cards are like slamming down or, you know, shaking or doing their thing, you know, and they're all juiced up in this way that's, you know, really kind of centered in this really physical, tactile feel. But even when you ramp the game up to 4X speed, and you're like at the end game, and you, you know, you've got like multiple Mols hitting on cards and everything like that, and crazy [ __ ] is going on, it's, um, it's amazing that it still holds together. Were you tweaking, like, were you looking at both ends of things? Did you kind of have a save game late game and sort of like booting that up and seeing how it looked in that, and then going back to like, sort of 1X play, or was it kind of just organically keeping an eye on things and seeing, making sure it didn't sort of fall apart later on?

Well, that one was, uh, so I would finish working on one thing, like, for example, the juice and the cards, and then I would like turn up the game speed and be like, "Okay, how, how high can I make this game speed before this thing starts, this ship starts falling apart, you know? Like, how fast can we make this thing go?" Yeah. And, uh, I kind of would tweak it from there. So every time I introduced a new thing, like the, the flame effect is another one. Every time I tacked on a new thing like that, I would be like, "Okay, how far can I push this thing before it really starts to like, show its cracks?" And, uh, and then just get obsessed over that and make sure it looks good from as the zero slides from zero to one, make sure it looks good along every step of the way.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. It's, and you know, it's amazing. I think obviously you've done a lot of work here, just in that process, even as like a little microcosm of it, um, in retaining that comprehension across the various speeds and, you know, how, um, you know, the multiple layer effects and everything that can happen in the late game. But it is also, I'm always amazed at like, what a human is capable of comprehending in like, when they're an hour into flow state, you know, just like, you've got them locked in for the last 59 minutes, they haven't blinked. Like, what a human can like pass in regards to information is severely impressive. Always blows my mind.

Definitely. Um, all right, well, look, we kind of skipped ahead into Balatro, so let's like, let's do it. Let's go right back to the start of Balatro. Um, talk to me, tell me what the year was, was the month, the day, the place you were when, when it kind of hit you, the seed of this idea?

Okay, I, I have a story about this actually. It's maybe even a little earlier than you're expecting. Um, I'm, let's go, when I was in high school, um, me and two of my close friends, uh, I'm Canadian, by the way. We would go to Tim Hortons, which is a Canadian staple coffee shop. Um, we would go to Tim Hortons quite a few weeknights every week, and we would play card games with each other. Um, like, I played card games my whole life, like with my great-grandmother. I played card games with my family growing up, with, uh, my friends, just normal 52-card card games. And when I was, I was going to Tim's a few times a week with my friends, and we made a game. It was my first experience with game design was then, actually. We made this, this game. It's based on a Cantonese card game called Big Two.

Big Two. Wow. That is a deep cut.

Yeah. It's, how, how are you exposed to that? Was it family or friends or?

No, one of my friends, uh, showed us how to play it. And I had played the game Janitor, or President, before. It goes by a bunch of different names. It's, it's a card-shedding game. Um, and it's very similar, but Big Two is, uh, I think that's the one that we played the most. Big Two. And we sort of organically came up with this weird version of the game where instead of playing everything face up, you actually play it face down, and you say what you're playing, and then there's kind of maybe.

Just for, I'm just going to dive in here for, for our listeners who aren't familiar with what Big Two is, maybe just give them like an overview, because the sim, the similarities to Balatro are like evident once you sort of understand.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, I guess if you know Balatro, then, basically, you have a hand, you have a hand of cards. Um, I believe it's, you start with 13, I'm not entirely sure, but you have a whole bunch of cards in your hand. You're playing against other players that also have cards in their hand. You can't see. You, you play maybe like a three by itself, and that counts as a poker hand, just a three. It's a high card three. And then you go around the circle, and then, uh, other players can play a higher card. They can play a four, five, six, what have you. You could also play a pair instead, and then they also have to beat it with a pair. You could play three of a kind, four of a kind, a straight, etc. It's, you're playing poker hands, basically. So there's, there's a lot of similarities at the base mechanical level to, um, to Balatro there, um, which is actually what Balatro is based on, is Big Two, not, not on poker. So, um, so that's Big Two. Normally, you play all those hands face up, so that your, the next player knows what to play. But in our version of a game, you play them face down, and then you say what it is. "Oh, this is a three. This is a three of a kind with Jack," or what have you. And then there's a bluffing component. Um, and it was so much fun. We played it all the time. Um, and I don't know, I have a lot of memories of us playing that game.

And so during the pandemic, years later, um, I wanted to make like an online version of that game because there are online versions of Big 2 that I could have played with my friends, but I wanted to play that original game that we made, made, um, all those years ago with them. So I was initially, it was December, uh, 2021, maybe either 2021 or 2022, that I started working on this game. Um, and it was, that was the intention. It was just going to be our weird version of Big 2. That's, that's all it was going to be. Um, and at the time, I was watching Northernlion play Luck Be a Landlord, and the idea kind of hit me. Like, I kind of abandoned the original idea of the game right away after I had the engine. The engine made.

Ryan's just, Ryan's just like, his stream has just completely turned you in a 180. My poor friends. I was like, "Oh, I got this fun idea. We could play, you know, that old game we used to play." We could play. And then like two weeks later, like, "Ah, yeah, never mind, guys. I'm on this other thing." So I really enjoyed, like, Luck Be a Landlord. I enjoyed a lot about it. One of the things is how non-gamery it was. It wasn't soaked in this fantasy lore language, uh, that I didn't really identify with, because I wasn't playing these games growing up, you know? I was playing Midtown Madness and Halo. I wasn't playing, you know, Dungeons and Dragons and like Diablo. So, um, so I, I love that about it. I love that it was just pure numbers. Um, and then that was kind of the excitement of it, and I love the engine-building ideas behind it. So that's kind of how it all started. Is December back in, I don't know, about three years ago at this point, so yeah, 2021.

Yeah. Wow. It's funny, you know, and just for our listeners as well, our, our wonderful producer, Claudio, has mentioned that another variant, or it's got numerous variants, but another name for a Big Two is, especially for our Filipino friends, is Pusoy Dos, or it might be called, you know, Big Juice or Top Dog, depending on where you're from. But yeah, great game. I remember playing. It's funny because I, you know, just come from a family of whites, like, you know, there wasn't really an Asian influence when I was younger, but we, uh, yeah, we played that as kids as well. It was a, it was a classic.

Yeah, I think there's something about, um, these shedding card games. I think most cultures have some variant of this with the, the standard 52-card deck that's that's popped up over the last like, hundred years. Um, I feel like when I describe the game to someone without saying what the name is, they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, that's this game. I used to play that when I was a kid." So, um, it's just funny. I don't know. I think there's something really magic and special about playing cards is like this, this shared cultural language of games. Um, and this, the conversation always comes up over and over again when I talk to game developers about it, like, there's something very inherently magical, I think, about playing cards. So, yeah.

I'm so glad that you said that, because they really, that's like something that I had in my notes here, and it is something that I wanted to dive into into with you, because, you know, coming from our Melo, even where it's not playing cards, right? We understood that, and it was very evident from even when, so our Melo, we prototyped it on paper for about eight months before we got stuck into anything digital. And even just any of the mechanics that we turned into cards, um, there was some that really worked and some that didn't. And there was this really, you know, I can't recall the design metric or the sort of the razor that I'd sort of that I'd come to realize back then, because it was 10 years ago or more now, but there was clearly card or features that worked because the, the construct of a card is this universally understood thing. You know, in it, like, that you have like the design affordance in a card. Like, you hand someone this rectangular piece of paper or cardboard, and they know what to do with it. They know that they play it, that it has some kind of functionality, that it can interact with other cards itself. There is, you know, lore around them. It's so easy to have this lore around them being magical, or that things can be contained in them. Like, you know, all of these games that, even if they use a pocked deck, we're projecting concepts that are abstracted a lot of the time into these, you know, 52-deck, you know, 52-card deck, the classic playing card deck. Um, it's, tell me a little bit about what you, what you realized during development, you were latching on to, and you were utilizing. And because obviously, as you mentioned, you play Big Two, you wanted to do this thing with your friends, and then you saw, um, Ryan streaming like Luck Be a Landlord, and I'm guessing you didn't say it explicitly, but I'm guessing the big pivot for you was away from multiplayer and into a single player kind of Roguelike variant of the game.

Yeah, so huge pivot, obviously. You know, really special there. But was there something, did you know from the start that you were onto something really special and magical with the playing card thing? And what did you learn after the fact? And obviously, the game went super viral. That's it. It's played an, it's had an impact obviously on the success of the game. I'd love to hear the difference in, you know, how you perceive the value of just the, the 52-card playing deck and, you know, the construct of cards and the concept of a card in our minds culturally, and then how you feel about it now afterwards and seeing the success that you've had and how people have reacted to the game.

Well, first of all, I, I completely agree with what you were saying earlier about about cards being, it's people just know what to do with them. Um, so I think when I started, I didn't, I didn't really know that. Um, I wasn't, I wasn't basing this game, this engine-building game, off the fact that people have an inherent understanding of what to do with cards. And I'm really leaning on that. I didn't know that until partway through. So I think what I've done is I've really stood on the shoulders of giants, and I've borrowed this tried-and-true game design strategy, which is, I think it's kind of skew-morphism of people just know what to do with cards. They see a card, they know what it does, they know how to, they know how to interact with it, like you said. Yeah. Um, I borrowed that without really thinking about what the implications were, and I think I borrowed a lot more heavily than other games in the past have, and I think that's part of the reason why I succeeded too. Like, I, not only did I borrow, like, you're supposed to play a card, or you could discard a card, because other games are like that as well, but I also borrowed things like the language behind rarity in trading card games, you know? Like, "Oh, this is like a foil. Like, I'm opening a booster pack." I think people kind of have an understanding of how, how those things work as well.

Yeah. And they're also linked to like memories and high spikes in emotion from kid. And you get your first like Blastoise foil or something from your Pokémon deck. Seeing that your first foil Joker in, um, in, in Balatro, like absolutely is like tapping into some kind of.

PA of you know, like your brain networks was like formed as a kid, yeah? Definitely. So, there's there's an element of that that I was borrowing from not only like playing card traditions, but also just general card game traditions. I was pulling it from any direction I could. Tarot cards, right? I'm pulling from from that as well.

So, um, another part of it is that I, I also didn't tack on too much complexity to the core mechanics of the game. So, they are, when you start, it is literally just playing cards. That's all it is. Like, you're playing it like you're playing Big Two, yeah? Um, or poker. Like, you're just trying to find the highest scoring hand in your in your bunch, and you're trying to discard to get better hands and and what have you.

And, um, and then I think the thing where I started taking creative liberties and like extending past what people are familiar with is the Jokers. Um, a lot of them are just kind of wacky. Like, the starting Joker is obviously just like a normal Joker from a deck of cards, but like they get wacky. The things that they do have nothing to do with normal playing card decks at all. So, so I feel like a lot of the design of the game is like a Trojan horse, where I snuck in a more complex game wearing the hat of a simple game, in a way.

Yeah, it's the, it's the pill in the peanut butter. But yeah, exactly. Peanut butter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's, it is amazing. And it is like, you've laid it out here. And to be completely honest with you, I hadn't actually thought about it that way. Obviously, I'm playing it and experiencing it like everyone else. But yeah, you just play the game like Big Two, and all of the elements around it are then layering the trading card or the like, tarot mechanics and everything. So, your complexity as a player and how you interact with it doesn't actually change. It's just your comprehension of how things are going to play out, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I don't want to say that I completely locked into making it, you know, this really simple experience to start with. I think the reason why it happened that way is because I, I dislike complexity in other games. So, so I was really hesitant to add, you know, really long descriptions, um, really complex interactions between two single elements of the game. I think the complexity is better when it emerges between, you know, more nodes than just like a couple, you know, really complicated things. I don't think I did a perfect job of that part. But, um, yeah, I think because I'm so averse to complexity in other games, I think it was just kind of naturally that that's how this game evolved.

[ __ ] Yeah, yeah. It's so, it's so incredible like how organic it sort of has seemed to have happened. So, let's, let's go back to this, this timeline of your development. So, you've, you've had this moment where, watching, um, Northern Lion play like, Be a Landlord, you decide on this pivot. What were the kind of, was it just like, oh my God, this is it? And you were like a coiled up spring and sort of, you know, you had a big burst of momentum? Or like, tell me about those first few kind of prototypes or so? Or actually, I'm guessing that's how you work.

Um, yeah, I, I was kind of just stumbling forward a little bit. Like, for the first, I didn't have, I don't have like a game design document or anything. I just like, um, I didn't have Jokers in the game for like, a few months. Which sounds, yeah, I know, right? I love those weird tidbits of game trivia. It's like, yeah, we, we didn't even have like, Ally in the game, The Last of Us, or something like that. Like, you didn't have the central mechanic in your game.

Have along. It's so beautiful. Yeah, well, and it wasn't very fun like at the start. It was just kind of like, you play the hand, and then that's kind of it. Like, the only way you interact with the game is you up-grade the playing cards, and that was it. And it was too complicated because then you, instead of keeping track of five Jokers, you're, as the main thing, you're keeping track of 52 cards is the main thing. And I wanted that to like, not be the main thing that you're talk, you're thinking about when you're playing.

So, um, it, it evolved very slowly. I wouldn't even say it was fun at all for like, eight months in in development. Yeah. Um, but actually, personally, I don't think I had fun with the game until like, the week it was released, if I'm being honest. But, um, just like all my previous. That's that's not that's not an uncommon thing, right? And like, it's very. So, I work in strategy games, obviously, right? We have a studio for the last 13 years, we've been making strategy games. And it's insane how long you can be making your own. Our last game that we released around the same time as Balatro, just a few days afterwards, Sol and Firm. That game is a reimagining of a game that was released in 2009. Like, we just basically, like, obviously I don't want to minimize it, but you know, like, we took this game from 2009 and brought it into the, you know, the, um, into 2024 and made it 3D and everything. We, you know, tweaked some things, but it was a game that we knew was there and worked. We knew what we were make. Not only did we have a blueprint, we had a whole existing game. And still the game [ __ ] sucked for ages. I remember talking to Shams, formerly of Paradox, now Arrowhead, and him talking about how, how bad Crusader Kings 3 was for like, so long in development. It was like the third iteration of a game that they've been developing for years. These are systems-heavy games, right? Like, you, I've, I've actually read an interview where you talk about, you know, the key of, or, you know, the core of Balatro really is like things interacting with each other, right? And creating these really interesting decision spaces of what card do I play to get these things? And having effects and cards and content layering over the top of each other. You need a certain amount of systems and then a certain amount of content in the game for that to even work.

Cry. Definitely. Oh, yeah. And not only that, but like, when you add a system, it, when, in my case, at least, I'm batting 500. Like, I very often add a system and flesh it out over the course of a month, two months, three months, maybe a year, and then it's like, oh, this actually just sucks. This is not fun. You have to be okay just like getting rid of it. Because with a systems-heavy game like this, if an entire system you're interacting with isn't fun, then all the systems that inter, it interacts with are also going to suffer for it. So you have to be really ruthless, I think, with your design and being okay just, yeah, I just wasted a whole bunch of time, but it's not a waste because now I know that this doesn't work, you know?

Yeah. What a fantastic piece of advice. How one system can just poison the well, so to speak. Yeah, you can't get attached to it because it. I have an example of one. Like, I had a, I was struggling with, um, the money in the game, and people were able to re-roll too much. So you can basically just force whatever build you want every single game, which is counter to my kind of design idea that I had. And so I was like, oh, I'll just introduce a new mechanic, a new currency for re-rolls, just for re-rolls. Implemented it, added some items around it, and it just sucked. It just plain sucked. I spent a lot of time on it. And I remember deleting it the one day, and then playing it again, and I was like, oh, this is just way better. I don't know why. Like, it's, it's so obvious that that was the right thing to do. But now I know, you know? So I can, I can move past it, and I can try and find a different solution to the problem. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible stuff. The things we discover when we were going. And just like, you know, I really learned that lesson early on in my career too. I remember I was working on a game for Warner Brothers, like a licensed game, and the producer came out from Warner Brothers and like asked me to change something, and I was just so against it. Um, and he was, he basically just put his foot down. He was like, change it, dude. And I was like, okay. Changed it. And the game was immediately better. Yeah. And it really taught me something real, like there, that I took forward with me moving, moving on, which is exactly what you're saying. It was the same moment for me in games.

Now, I did interrupt you there. You were talking about, like, you know, implementing the Joker and how you sort of came to figure out you, that the game wasn't fun. Yeah. Right. So, um, so what I did in that case is what I always did when I was making games. And I, um, you know, I was working on the game for probably a few months at that point, and I, I was having no fun in actually playing the game. I was having a ton of fun making it, but I didn't think the game was any fun itself. And I gave it to my friends to play. Um, I think I gave it to three or four friends, and I think some of them probably didn't play it because they're like, oh, what is this? Like, uh, he here he is giving us another game again. Um, but one of them, like, a month or two later, one of them, I was talking to them, they're like, oh, yeah, that g game, that card game that you had, I played it for like, 40 hours. And I'd never heard someone say that before about one of my games. And I was like, what? Like, yeah. So I knew that there was something there at that point. I, and I wasn't maybe able to experience it because I, the discovery process was already gone for me. And that's kind of a big part of Roguelikes. Um, but so I knew there was something there at that point. I didn't just didn't have a chance to experience it until much, much later. Later. So.

H. Yeah. Hell yeah. Okay. So, you, what were the kind of watershed moments of the game really coming together for you? That was one, like, you sort of charting, charting the development in regards to like, big discoveries or big. Because another thing that is, you know, is quite incredible about, um, Balatro development is that you're actually not a Roguelike or deck builder player, right? Like, you explicitly went out of your way not to play those games so that they wouldn't, to use the analogy again, right, poison the well, right? In the way that you're approaching these things. And you, I, I've read something where you've spoken about, you know, the, um, the node maps for, you know, um, deck building progression and stuff like that, of pathways you can take, and how you might have just co-opted that had you seen it previously, which would have been obviously the wrong decision for Balatro. Like, talk to me a little bit about, you know, that, um, that thinking, and then maybe some watershed moments through development that you think you came to organically. Um, and I've got a couple here that we can dive into as well.

Sure. Yeah. Um, well, to start with, like, I have played Roguelike games before. Um, and I, I really enjoy them, maybe not as much to play, but more to think about. I just, there's something about the discovery process and the, the whole idea of synergies just going completely off the wall in a game like The Binding of Isaac that I really do love. Um, so when I started working on Balatro, and I knew it was going to be a Roguelike, which was probably within the first month, um, I decided then, like, avoid Roguelikes. Don't play any deck builders. That, to that point, I hadn't played one before. Like, I, I saw Northern Lion play Lobotomy Corporation, so, you know, I knew how that game worked. But I, I was like, stop watching it. You're gonna, you know, you're going to learn too much. Um, and instead, um, do it yourself. And the reason why I did that wasn't because, because I wanted to make some crazy commercial success. I didn't want to make something that was unique. I wanted to make something that I didn't know. I wanted to dive into unknown design space myself, because it's way, way more fun to do that than it is to do like a technical demo where you're just re-implementing something that you see. I don't, I don't find that nearly as fun as just like going head first into a problem yourself and trying to figure out which way is up so that you can swim to the surface. Um, I, I find that way more rewarding personally. So that's, that's why I did it that way. Now, I think one of the things that I, I have seen people say is like, oh, I didn't play any Roguelikes before. That's not true. I, I've played Roguelikes before, and I even played a, a few Roguelikes during development. Um, I was trying to avoid deck builders specifically. So I was playing, um, I think the one I played the most was, um, Risk of Rain 2. I really love that game a lot. Um, but that was really the only one I played for about two years of development, uh, for this game. So I was trying to avoid in general, the, that whole kind of area.

Yeah. And you think it obviously had like a positive impact? Is there anything? Okay, here's a question. Have you played in many deck builders in the time since launch? I've obviously, you've been a very busy person, but, um, yeah. So I played, I played Slay the Spire. Um, and I like that game a lot. Um, I've played a few since then as well. Um, yeah. So I do play them now. I, I don't play them a lot. I, I just don't really play video games that much in general, to be honest. But, um, I do pay attention to them a lot more because I feel like I'm an industry participant now. And I, there's a lot of things I really appreciate about some of the nuanced design ideas that people come up with now. And it always makes me so thankful that like, oh, thank, thank God I wasn't paying attention to this stuff when I was working on Balatro, because it would have, it would have ruined it, I think. I just would have stolen all these ideas, you know? Um, yeah. So, sorry, second part of your question there was about, uh, did I stumble into anything good because of that? And I, I think most of the good things I that I implemented were stumbled into because of that. So, wow. Like, the skip mechanic in the game, for example. Um, I think it's maybe a little controversial. I really love it though. It's basically my version of the navigation system, like the node map. Um, the, the scoring system is just multiplication. But I feel like I don't see it very often now that I, I look at other games. Um, and the tableau of Jokers, where you can remove them if you want, but you only have a limited set of them. Uh, it felt really natural to me, maybe because I had like the background of Big Two, and you have like a maximum hand size in Big Two. But looking at other games, I, I don't see that very much either. So I do think there are some small, they they seem relatively small to me, design ideas that actually have very large gameplay impacts and very large design implications, um, that push me in different directions throughout the years working on Balatro.

Yeah. Well, did you actually touch on one that I absolutely want to dive into, because the blind skip mechanic is, it's so different to the risk-reward proposition that a lot of deck builders propose, and especially like, even a lot of Roguelikes propose. That I think I was playing Balatro for six to 10 hours before I realized, before I bothered to like, actually see what the value proposition was that it said on it. And I was like, oh, wait, this is good for me if I do this. This is very interesting, right? And then it changed up the entire way that I played Balatro. And I think this is something that happens as you play Balatro and like, you know, the, the various systems and mechanics sort of unfold in front of you, and the possibilities unfold in front of you. You have these like big light bulb moments. But a lot of that is kind of like, almost knowledge-gated in a sense, or like, it's, you're a comprehension, you reach a point that's then like, opens up the next layer of thinking for you. Whereas this one was like a mechanic very explicitly that I took for granted or kind of ignored or just projected my own expectations based on my frame of reference from design conventions across the genres that it was going to be a completely different proposition to what it was. Um, tell me how you, let's talk a little bit about that, that skip blind mechanic, and how you arrived at it, and, you know, when it started feeling good, if there were any sort of, um, sort of wins or fails there, and getting it to where it is now.

I see that the skip blind mechanic is probably the one thing that's weakest about the game, and that was has been the biggest struggle to get right. The game, but I, there's something I just, I love about it anyway, even though I still think it's not the strongest mechanically. Um, so it was probably a year and a half into development when I first introduced it. Um, before, you always had to do small blind, big blind, boss. And the first iteration of the skip mechanic was, if you skip both small and big blind, then the next shop contains a playing card that has like a seal on it, I think is what it was. Horrible reward. Um, the, the players were all like, why would I ever do this? The, the, you know, the value proposition is terrible on this. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Um, so then I introduced, yeah, it was about a year and a half in development, maybe two years. I started introducing different types of skip tags that you can get. This new, basically layer of complexity where you have different types of rewards. So the value proposition changes throughout the run, and it changes depending on the context of, you know, what Jokers do you have? What's your deck composition like? Are you struggling to score points? Like, that kind of thing.

Um, I think it's, it's in an interesting spot right now. I do think that on average, you should not skip the tech, the, uh, the blinds. I think it's better to play each blind and then get the value out of playing the round. Yeah, it definitely feels like whenever I do it, there's a sync occurring for, you know, in some way that I'm gonna, that's gonna, you know, catch up with me at some point. Yeah. Yes, it's, I think there is, there's a balance there. I do have kind of a, a target of like, oh, I want, you know, maybe 25, 15 to 25% of the time, you could skip. That's kind of the ballpark I was aiming for in design. I think it's probably less than that, ideally, quite a bit less than that. But, um, it's, I still find it really interesting because I, I do feel like it was, it's a little bit like, it's my baby. I feel like I, I came up with it as kind of a novel solution to a, a problem that in some ways represents, um, a navigation system in the game, in, in kind of a crude, a crude context. But yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's really cool. And I actually, like, I just, like I said, it really changed the game for me when I started interacting with it in that way. It's, it's, it's one of those, it's weird. It's one of those things. It's, um, I think when I see players play the game, it's almost hidden in plain sight, which there's a lot of mechanics in this game that are like that, where you can just kind of ignore what you're seeing on the screen, and you can still try and, you know, win the game, and you might be able to win a run that way. But, um, you don't have to interact with the skip tags if you don't want to. Uh, so like, there's a lot of people that like, oh, yeah, I never read what those are. Like, I never even consider them. Or there's a lot of people that that's like all they do. They just try and skip every single time. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. I would say I'm not in the 15 to 20% camp, that's for sure. Um, but which probably has something to say about how far I've made it through Balatro as well.

Um, all right, look, I, I think something else that is really interesting about this, because correct me if I'm wrong, the progress that you're talking about making on this skip blind mechanic happened after your game first interfaced with the public, which I believe was putting up a public demo on your Steam page. Am I right? That's, uh, yeah, that's right. It was a public, it was a beta test. Them, beta test feature. Yeah, they were like, playtesting or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. So talk to me a bit, obviously, like deck builders and, you know, Roguelikes, you know, the, the community interaction and engagement with that is massive. And you'd be playing with a few friends already, obviously, they were playing the game as you mentioned, and it'd been yourself, um, who'd been interacting with this, but it was the first time that it had gone out into the world. And I mean, I know that some streamers in that grabbed it and got a bit of traction even in the, in the demo, um, phase. Life, talk to me a little bit about how that community and the public engaging with your game, and the commentary coming around it, how did that shape the shape of your development? Like, all of a sudden, it being out in the open, and you now having these stakeholders, so to speak, of like, public, how did you pass that information? How were you collecting it? How did you decide what was for the game and what wasn't?

It was a really interesting time. Um, I struggled to remember a lot of it because this is around the time when everything started happening. And like publicly, I think a lot of people saw and interacted with with me in like my Discord, which is where I started talking to people more more. But like in my private life, there was a like a lot going. I was, you know, trying to make a company at the time, and I was, uh, talking to Playstack about a publishing deal. And like, there was a lot going on. So I struggled to remember all the details. But basically, in May of 2023, I posted a, yeah, Steam Playtest feature, which you get basically the full version of the game. And, uh, you go into a queue, and I allow, you know, however many people to get the full game. And then they join the Discord and they say, hey, this card is stupid, hey, this all sucks. And I'm like, yep, yep, yep. And then I write it down into a big spreadsheet. Um, and so that was the first time I got like real data about the game. And basically immediately, the game was completely broken. It was an unbalanced mess because of course it is. You know, I'm not a highly analytical guy. Like, I, I'm not the person that would solve this game. There's smart people on the internet that are, they love doing that kind of thing. So, but even then, it wasn't, it wasn't popular for, uh, at least it didn't start getting popular at all for at least a month and a half. Um, so it was up, and I think I had, you know, maybe a hundred people in the Discord, um, very, very passionate about sharing their ideas, coming up with new ideas, discussing, and I would say a very respectful, um, very positive manner. Um, so I think we, we made like this really nice, almost like a game design community with the players, where we would listen to their feedback. They'd be like, hey, this is too strong, hey, this is too weak, why would I ever skip, um, this boss is unfair. And I would try and listen to everything and I would, uh, really try and take it to heart when, when I heard stuff come up more than one time for more than one player. I think it was pretty obvious that like, you know, admit that you're wrong, the designer sometimes, because, um, you know, I'm, I can't play this game as much as 30 or 300 people can. So, yeah. So that's how it started. That's how kind of like the iron started getting sharpened with other people's iron. Um, and it, after it kind of exploded in popularity over that summer, uh, from all these streamers playing the game, so did the number of people that were testing the game, um, and all the attention. And, you know, a lot of it was hard to deal with, but I tried to keep the same ideas of like, try and listen to everyone, even if they're being negative, try and listen to what they're actually saying about the design of the game and the balance and the changes that they want, because really, it just means that they're passionate about having fun with this thing that I've made.

Yeah. Were there any particular systems that you feel the state that they're in now, basically, is complete thanks to the community? You know, like, there was just invaluable feedback that came through on some particular system, or even something specific as a boss, or something like that, right?

I would say literally all of them. Yes. I think I think there's more after I went public with the game. I do think there are more numbers and and Jokers and vouchers and bosses and everything that I changed then that I, I let the same. Um, so pretty much everything. I have to thank, um, some passionate people that wanted to hone this game to be something more than it was. Um, we, at one point, we threw out, I believe, half of the bosses. About there's 30 bosses, or 30, I can't remember exactly how many, but, uh, we, we, I basically deleted half of them because I was like, yeah, these, everyone was complaining about them, they weren't good. And then we had a huge brainstorming session on the Discord, and and we're just trying to come up with different ideas for bosses. Um, and I was trying to engage all the different people to to contribute. And then we had a big vote as to what people liked, so I could kind of narrow it down a little further. And, uh, from there, I tried implementing some things and testing them myself. And, um, so that's kind of an extreme example of like, it's almost like design democratization of design. But I, I try and guide those conversations as much as I can.

To, as you were describing it, I was like, well, that is a very democratic design process. And something I've also noticed about the Balatro community, and, you know, no matter where you find them, it's surprisingly non-toxic as well, you know, as far as game communities go. Um, how, tell me a little bit about your relationship with the community, and how you think you fostered what it seems like from the outside to be such a, such a positive relationship. I mean, you know, sometimes these things, even with their, the best of intentions, to have a democratic design process can backfire on us, right? Like, you know, you bring people into the design process, and then you go, hey, that's great feedback, but we're going to take it in this direction. And then all of a sudden, it's like, well, but we all voted the other way. You know, like, how have you gone about setting those boundaries and keeping the expectations clear, and, you know, fostering such a great and constructive community?

I think anyone that was around the Discord at that time will know that I was also kind of a hardhead sometimes, and I would say like, no, like, it's going to stay this way. There are reasons why it's going to stay this way, or no, I'm going with this idea, even if it's not the most popular idea. Yeah. Um, I wanted to hear ideas from all angles because you never know when you're going to hear like, oh, that's obviously the best idea, that's definitely what the game should have. But at the same time, you know, I still did feel like the designer. And I don't think that people got upset that I just like wasn't listening to them either. I think I always tried to be respectful to people. And, um, since the game launched, I have not really been involved in the Discord as much because there's like, there's just, there's too many people for my own mental health. I can't, I can't be around like online discourse this much anymore. So I'm just trying to focus on the things that make me happy about game development, which is making a game, and not necessarily spending so much time discussing it and debating it. And, um, just getting back to basics about what I, why I did this in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny, like, especially with the kind of success that you've had, right? Um, there's this great phrase, um, from Greg McKeown, the, uh, writer of a book called Essentialism. And he says, uh, success begets opportunities, and opportunities distract. And that, you know, in his, in his instance, he's talking about business opportunities and things like that, but it can also just distract you from the things that you care about and your values and what is actually important to you at the end of the day.

Yeah. Oh, there's so much truth in that. I feel like I struggle with that a lot, actually. There's just, you know, there's so much noise now. And my identity is not, I don't really talk about my identity very much. That's a big reason why I kind of don't want it to leech into my life in other ways. Um, I'm, I'm content with where I am, and I want to keep, you know, I want to go back to those days when I was just like obsessed with making the card jiggle good. Like, I want to just make the card jiggle good again. That's so, I'm trying to like recapture that that feeling.

Yeah. No, I applaud you in setting those boundaries. I think you have to. You know, as someone who's been through like, the cycle of having, you know, a degree of success with their game and, you know, being in the public eye and the industry's eye and stuff like, it's, um, it can be a scary place, and you really got to actively defend those things that you care about. I remember in my first job, CEO, wonderful man, he was, he ran a studio of 80 people. And I remember having a conversation with him, and we were getting to these big long debates or whatever in his office, and he said to me at one point in frustration, he was like, you think I wanted any of this? You think I wanted to be responsible for 80, 80 people's like, fam's well-being or putting food on their table? I'm a programmer. I haven't programmed. I haven't coded in 10 years. And it was this incredibly vulnerable moment where I think like, he did genuinely enjoy creating a a place for talent. And I, I don't think it spoke to some deep, you know, depression or like, um, an anxiety or regret or anything, but it just did highlight, I think, for me, and it was a moment of vulnerability of him sharing, like, how quickly you can, you can slip into these moments of like, oh, yeah, I'm not pro, I haven't programmed in 10 years now. I, other thing, and it just happened to me. Oh, yeah. I, I feel so bad for the, I know, I know what he's talking about. And, yeah, yeah. The pull is really strong to just like, I don't know, even like dealing with company things now. And, um, there's just, yeah, there's just so much noise. And it, it is really easy to get sucked into all of it. I am kind of a little bit getting sucked into some of it, but I'm, you know, I'm still trying my best to keep a boundary. And, uh, it's kind of impossible in some ways. Like, um, you know, when I was working on this game, and all my previous games before that, there was no temptation for any of this. There was no distraction besides this. It was just like, you know, get home from work, oh, I'm gonna boot up the computer and draw some silly pictures of Jokers, you know? There, there was nothing else going on. So, man, that sounds, it's amazing. It was. Yeah. It was.

So, let's talk a little bit now, I think this is a perfect segue into your relationship with Playstack. I mean, you're, you're famously a solo developer on this, but obviously, there's a team behind you on the publishing side of things, assisting you with all. And, you know, we will dive into some of the, the hairier things that they've had to handle as well, like the, you know, the rating stuff and everything. But talk to me a little bit about your relationship with Playstack when they came on board, and how it's assisted you in staying focused, or ways in which maybe like, you know, some fails along the way in which you've both had to sort of, you know, um, uh, correct your relationship along the way or refine how you work together, right?

Yeah, well, so to start with, I was, you know, I posted this game on, it was like May 2023, and then within a few weeks, I think the game only had like 300 or so wishlists at the time. Um, I got contacted by a scout from Playstack. I was getting contacted by a few other publishers as well, so I was speaking to, I don't know, four or five, uh, in June. And I was talking to all the devs that work for all these publishers as well. They were gracious enough to give me email addresses of a whole bunch of different people they work with. Oh, that's great. Past. Um, and I heard Playstack, I'm not going to mention any other publisher names, but Playstack was the only one that like, everyone that worked with them was like, yes, they, I do not regret working with them. They did great, amazing. And I got to say, in the time that I work with them, I completely agree. They're just a bunch of really good, really passionate people about the industry. Um, every time a dev asks me like, hey, would you recommend Playstack? I, I'm like, enthusiastically yes. They know what they're doing. They care a lot. Um, like, for the terms of the contract, I'm not even sure they were giving me the best offer, but I just, something about, um, the pitch that they gave, and the, uh, the words that I heard from other devs, it just, it convinced me that like, yes, for sure, they are the right people to do this to partner with. And I regret none of it.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. And how did they, that sort of other part of that, that conversation, did they play a role in sort of being able to keep you focused on game development and facilitating you there and, you know, shifting other things around, you know, launching a commercial game? And I mean, the game had a bunch of hype leading up to launch as well, right? Obviously, the, the hype was growing.

Yeah. Um, how, how did they sort of help you keep your, keep your mind focused on drawing silly Jokers? It was a struggle. There's a lot of really difficult parts about this, right? Because this isn't like a Unity game, so porting was a big thing. Um, you know, it's not straightforward to port this game onto different platforms. We launched on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Mac a week later. So that was, you know, a huge stress. We, we hired some help for, um, porting. His name's Martin. He's in the credits. He's a wizard. He's the best. Um, I definitely wouldn't have been able to launch on a bunch of platforms without him. Shout out to Martin. Shout out to Martin. You're the best. Um, but yeah, like, that part was stressful. Um, I think there were a lot of parts that were stressful, and I don't, I don't think it's Playstack's fault. I think it's, it's because it was the first time I ever had a game in the public eye. Yeah. Um, if I didn't have a publisher, I think I would have struggled with a lot of the same things. It was really hard on my health for a long time. I had, I couldn't sleep for a long time. I was having like heart issues from anxiety for like months.

Wow. Is this, in, sorry, just, is this in the lead-up to release or post-release?

Lead-up to release. It was like, wow, couple months leading up.

What do you think that was? Was it the, was it the pressure of, was it just actually the amount of work that you had to do and how much you were working to get over the line, or was it the anxiety of, you know, the anticipation for release and the hype?

Uh, it was, there's just so much work to do, and I wasn't sure I could get it all done in time. And then just, like, stress about like, so many different things can go wrong. And I'm like, this single point of failure. Um, and I'm just trying to keep it together, you know? And I'm like, dealing with the public so much at that time, because you're right, there was so much hype leading up to launch. It's just like this total pressure cooker while I'm trying to maintain this relationship with the public, um, kind of like a healthy back and forth. They're helping me hone the game and test it and get it to the state that I want it to be in. Uh, there's just, there was a lot going on. It was really bad for my mental. It was bad for my health. Um, the moment the game launched, I basically, I, I booked the entire month of February until March 20th. So it's like, one month. And I was like, I'm just going to be available this entire time because everything's going to go horribly wrong, and I need to be available to fix it. And, um, it all went like way, way better than I thought it would. And it's just been slowly, my health and my mental has been slowly improving since then. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was definitely like a huge struggle as a solo dev. You know, I got to wear a lot of hats, but it also means I don't have a lot of people to take the slack. Um, and we had this hard date for February 20th, and it really was the perfect day to launch this game. Um, it was shortly after a Next Fest, but just like, that date was, uh, it was really hard to get everything done by that time.

Yeah. Wow. Well, congratulations on, you know, obviously crossing that threshold. What do you think? You said that everything seemed to go well. If you can sort of attribute it to anything that you did, or, you know, ways that you coded the game, or something like that, what was it? Or just like the sheer amount of work that you put in before launch? What, why do you think things went so well for you post-launch? I'm not talking about the success, I'm talking about things not falling apart, right?

Yeah. Sheer dumb luck. Um, basically. I, I honestly think it, it easily could have gone horribly wrong. Like, we, we submitted builds to like, major publications for, um, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox, and those take a while to get approvals. So, yeah, if we found a bug like two weeks before the launch day, which we found many, then it's very possible that the, our first review that's going to be revealed on February 20th, or 19th, or whatever the embargo date was, is just going to be like, two out of 10, couldn't play it, was a buggy mess, right? Yeah. I had no way of knowing that. Um, I had no way of knowing if the launch version of the game would be like that for all these people, and we'd have to like, wait a few days for a patch to go through. Um, so that's what I was expecting. And the only reason that didn't happen, I think, is just we got, we got lucky. We tried to test as much as we could, and it, it just happened to work. And thank goodness.

So, you know, talking about all of this and what you've gone through, and like coming from essentially what you would call hobbyist development before here, a bunch of the folks who listen to this podcast are what you would describe as hobbyist developers or enthusiasts. That might not be their job just yet. And then of course, we have a bunch of solo developers. It's a really great cross-section, our listeners. Shout out to you all, from games executives to people on the publishing side, to, you know, just developers in the trenches of your favorite AAA games. But what would you say to folks who are looking at solo dev? What were the pits and the peaks for you? And anything that you kind of learned that kept you sane along the way and helped you not only develop this game effectively and get it out, but obviously, you struggled with your mental health and physical health throughout it, but how did you keep it together in the end?

Um, okay. Well, I do have a bit of advice for like, solo devs and and hobbyist devs and and whatnot. Um, because I do get asked this a lot. I think people, like, even in my personal life, they'll ask me like, oh, you know, I'm getting into game development, do you have any tips? Um, I think the most important thing that I see people making the mistake of doing is it seems like people are too eager to make a hit game, and they don't even know if they enjoy the hobby in the first place. Like, you have to learn to love making a game that only you will ever play, or only you and like a friend will ever play. Uh, because if you don't enjoy doing that, you're never going to hone your skills enough to make a game that other people are going to want to play. Um, so like, I would say, if I had any advice, learn to love the hobby, because you're going to spend so much freaking time doing it. So if you don't like it, it's going to suck. It even sucks if you love it, like if you're doing it too much. Um, I also say like, with my last few months of dev, how hard it was for me, I don't really think I'm in much of a position to say what to do to avoid that, because I wasn't able to. Yeah. Um, I think it's something that every solo dev to some extent struggles with, and I, I don't know how to, how to avoid it, really. Um, I wish I did. Maybe I say yes too much to some things. Maybe, um, I'm too eager to plan pencil in hours that I, I'm not able to allocate. I don't know what it is, but I, I'm still looking for the answer to that question myself.

So, yeah. Look, I think, you know, our, our team under Chip Solum is, you know, some of the most experienced developers that I've worked with, same with Arrowhead. And it's just one of those things that you just know, like, what's the saying? Like, 95% is in the last 5%? Right? And I think just when you're a solo developer, it's that, that hit is not soaked across an entire team. You know, it's concentrated on one person. And it's just a, it can be an absolute crap fire and really unfair, I think, to a lot of solo developers, having to interface with every single issue when you're at the at the intersection of art and technology, trying to make it kiss as it like enters a box and you put the, you know, seal it over the top. Yeah. And I, I think it's the kind of thing that people aren't really meant to experience is, is being under the spotlight for that many people for

That long and everyone just kind of expects, like, "Oh, you should solve all of these problems because, can you imagine if you didn't solve some of these problems? That means that you're like a bad developer." And I think people don't realize that these are, you know, they're humans. You make so many mistakes in your day-to-day life, but they're all private, so it doesn't matter.

Um, so I don't know, cut yourself some slack. If you're a Dev, if you're a gamer, and you notice that there's a bug in the game, don't call the dev lazy because they're not. Um, it's just hard. It's just like a really hard job to do by yourself. It's hard to do with with other people too, but it's definitely hard to do by yourself.

For other reasons, I realized earlier this year that I was getting burned out because like the smallest, like, forum post from some community member like dragging one of our team members would like set me off in a rage for like half a day. And I'd be like, "Oh my god, I think I'm a little bit too sensitive to this."

Some of the moment, so protective of the team, right?

Yeah, yeah. I, there's so many solo devs that I've talked to, um, since starting this Balatro journey, that like most of them have gone through a phase of burnout at some point since then. Um, it's so, yeah, I don't think that there's a lot of people that are well-adjusted to to do this kind of work. I think this is just the kind of work that you need to be able to know how to distance yourself from.

Yeah, absolutely. Set up those healthy boundaries. Understand. I think over the years as well, you get better at identifying when you're kind of, you know, becoming frayed at the ends or burning both candles, sorry, both ends of the candle, right?

Yeah, definitely. Well, look, I do want to, you were talking about problems, right? That arise, um, towards the end of release. But you had a very significant and infamous problem arise shortly after release, which was the game disappearing from storefronts, right? Um, tell me, and for folks who don't know, why don't you step us through the process of what that looked like on your end when the sort of the klaxon started firing and something was wrong, and what actually happened? And then we can talk a little bit because I know you've gone to great lengths post that to ensure that, you know, gambling and Balatro never shall those two words ever meet, um, ever in the existence of time and history. So talk us through this process. What happened?

Well, so a lot of this is off-escated from me because it's Playstack that deals with the ratings. Yeah, that's a Playstack problem, right?

Yeah, yeah. So it's not my fault. Don't blame me. Um, no, but so early on in dev, I think it was way back in the fall, um, about a year ago, so like six months-ish before launch, um, we submitted our ratings to the various boards to get like a preliminary rating. And I believe PEGI came back to us, which is the European rating agency, PEGI. Um, I believe they said, you know, it's three plus or something, which is their lowest rating. And then we're like, we emailed them and said, "Can you just make sure, um, that this is the correct rating? We want to make sure we get it right." And they're like, "Yeah, three plus." Uh, and then we launched February 20th, 2024. And I think a week later, or later that week, during launch week, uh, PEGI adjusted the rating from three plus to 18 plus, which triggered an automatic, um, an automatic system in all the storefronts. Uh, like Nintendo Switch's eShop got rid of our game, so people couldn't buy it because it was more than three ratings, rating level, um, adjusted upwards. So for like the most, a portion of the most important week of our game's existence, it would just like was unable to be purchased by a large contingent of people because of these ratings changes.

Yeah. Um, and I think their justification for it is that it has gambling imagery. And I guess for me, I've thought about this a lot since then and just like understanding, what does that mean? Gambling imagery? Is that imagery of playing cards? Is that the word poker? Because poker isn't necessarily a gambling game, only if you bet money on it. In the same way that like watching turtles race is a gambling game because you could bet money on it. Um, so is that the problem? Is the problem that I use the term "blind" and "stake" because those are gambling terms? Um, because there's no, there's no staking or betting of actual chip or like virtual chips, nor is there anything to do with real money in the game.

Yeah, no, like explicitly. There's actually, because I was trying to think about this as well ahead of our conversation, and there's actually not a single gambling like mechanic in Balatro, funnily enough.

Right? Yeah. I think the, the closest two things, which which are kind of funny, the closest thing is probably the, um, pack opening, which is silly because pack opening, uh, like if you buy a booster pack from a trading card game, that is, in my opinion, that actually is gambling, but you're spending real, real money on it. That's why it's real gambling. In the game, it's fake money and the reward is fake. So there's no like real monetary gain or loss. There's nothing of true value being gained.

Yeah, there's no input or output of real-world value into the game.

Yeah, yeah. So it's like a risk-reward mechanic. Same thing with like the Wheel of Fortune, tarot card, those, like, there's a couple things like that. But for the most part, like the mechanics of the game are just based around normal risk-reward camp mechanics that you see in like every other roguelike in existence, all of which don't have this rating. So, um, I think it's unfounded. I think it's especially frustrating when there are real gambling mechanics in other games that are rated lower than Balatro. And I believe one of the people on the board for PEGI was like, in an interview, they said that they were happy with how it all shook out. And it's like, have you no morals? Like, fix the real problem. Like, leave our game at 18 plus, that's fine. But at least make some of these games where people can spend money on booster packs, like children can spend money on booster packs, make them have an 18 plus rating as well.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. Um, you know, this was the European agency, but I, you know, as you can probably tell from my accent, I'm from Australia. And something that a lot of people don't know about Australia is that we are literally the worst nation in the world for gambling. Like we have the highest rate of debt from gambling and gambling spend per capita in the world for any nation. Um, and like our laws are just around it, they're just horrifically lack. All of the fantastic bands that came out of Australia, like ACDC and Silverchair, and all these, they came up in a live venue environment that now, you know, at the local pubs and everything, that basically doesn't exist anymore because now there's slot machines in every single pub on the corner of every single street. Like it's really, like one of Australia's kind of hidden, to most folks who would think about us internationally, but if you're in Australia, it's a very, very large problem. And there's a lot of conversation happening at the legislative level at the moment about banning advertising and everything in gambling. So the destruction that gambling can have is like huge. And I understand your frustration when you make a game that just has like some terminology from, again, games that like, you know, typically in a casino or in other games might be utilized for gambling, but they, it's not necessarily gambling themselves. Um, and they slap this 18 plus rating on you, but then aren't pursuing the infinite slot machine games or things like that.

Yeah, it is really frustrating. And I don't know, I, I do see it a lot here in, in Canada as well. I watch a lot of hockey, and, um, there's just so many ads for sports betting now. Like it's been legalized here as a few years ago. And I don't know, it's like, there's a lot of kids that watch, watch those games, like a lot of kids watch those games. And they're seeing like their heroes, you know, say, "Hey, bet with this betting agency. It's, you know, it's really fun." Um, and then I just think, like, why are they going after my game? Like, you guys are aiming in the wrong direction. Like, sure, you hit me. Yeah, okay, I'm like a bystander here. But at least like try and get like the right people.

Yeah. And look, the system of pulling the game down from the store and everything, like, you can, like, that's a great system to have in place. You can imagine if they, some, something that like actually had genuine gambling mechanics in it or some horrific scene hidden in a game that like someone passed over and got it wrong. It's, but unfortunately, you've just like, you've, you've caught some collateral damage of like these systems and the decision that's fallen.

Yeah, I, I think there's a lot of people that thought Nintendo was to blame for this, and Nintendo did nothing wrong here. Like, I'm glad that that system's in place as well. It just so happened to burn us here. But like, it's a good thing that, um, if something does sneak through the the cracks, that it, that there is a fail-safe for it. So definitely Nintendo has no blame here. Same with any other digital storefront, um, that pulled the game. That's, it's completely understandable why they did it. I think it's, it's the ratings board issue.

Well, there was something, one element of this that you could control moving forward that you went and did. Why don't you tell everyone about that?

Uh, yeah. So I've been thinking a lot about, um, you know, as I was making this, uh, my company in the middle of like trying to sign a contract with Playstack because I didn't want to sign with my name, I wanted to sign with my company. Um, I was also thinking about like, um, what am I going to leave to my family? You know, trying to come up with a plan with some of the proceeds of this game and trying to make sure some positive things come out of that. And one of the things I'm very adamant about is that I don't want, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don't want this game to be used to start selling gambling products, to be to start selling things that I'm like, ethically opposed to. So, um, we're writing into all of my, um, estate contract stuff, so like my will and whatnot, that you can't, it can be used, the Balatro IP can't be used for gambling purposes. It can't be used, can't be, um, passed on the side of a slot machine. Can't be used to sell like NFTs, um, that kind of thing. So, um, yeah, I'm kind of working through that right now because it is like, kind of a long, complicated legal process.

Is it? And I guess when there's a will, there's a way, right? So you got to make sure that like, once you're gone, someone, you have some problem child in the future, you have some, some, uh, some disgruntled relationship with at some point, you don't want them taking your game and like finding a way to make it a blockchain pay-to-experience, right?

So I have seen quite a few people say like, "Oh, they can just do whatever they want after." And that's not true. Like, the way that I have it set up, like, you know, I've hired lawyers to do this, so no, like, it's, it's ironclad. It cannot be used, even if I'm not here, uh, for those purposes. So yeah.

Hell yeah. Cool. Well, that's got to feel good, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah. It's, I've been approached enough times by like some online NFT casino thing, and they're like, "Hey, we think we want to license Balatro. We think you could make like a really good." And it's like, like, no. That's, you just like spray them with the, yeah, yeah.

Down. All right. Well, hey, let's, um, I want to dive back into some more stuff around, you know, Balatro's design and its treatment and everything because I, there's just so much to unpack there. But I really appreciate you being so open and generous with, you know, uh, your experiences with Playstack, the the gambling sort of situation with people, and everything. So I want to dive into a little bit of the aesthetic, narrative thing here. Balatro, obviously, we spoke a lot about the juice and arcadey nature of it, how good the game feel is around it, and how much you worked on that. But something that's really evident from the start, obviously, is this retro aesthetic. It's got, you know, even the the CRT kind of treatment that it has to it. What, what was the, what was the inspiration around that? Is that something that your previous games that you tinkered around with had had before? How did you land on on that aesthetic? Because it really lends a whole lot, especially to things like the interdimensional kind of aspects of the game and everything.

Yeah, this is another one of those sheer dumb luck situations where at the time, um, I, I think I played, um, what's it called? Tiny Rogues. Um, and it had like a CRT slider effect in the, uh, menu. And I thought that was the funniest thing. I was like, a CRT slider? That is hilarious. So, um, I didn't know anything about shaders at that point. So I thought like, "Oh, this is a great opportunity for me to learn shaders because there's a lot of good shader support with LÖVE2D." And, uh, I banged my head against a wall for like weeks, and I figured out how to do it all. And, uh, the CRT kind of like barrel distortion effect was like my first foray into that. So it was not because I'm really into playing like arcade games on cabinets. It's not because I'm really into, I was into like video poker as a kid, or I was trying to emulate that feeling. It's just because I was trying to learn a shader and I was like, "That's kind of a cool effect. I like that idea. I should make it have like a CRT filter." So really, it was just dumb luck, I think, that turned out that way.

We'll take it. We'll take any dumb luck we can get, considering how hard game dev is.

Yeah. Um, another thing as well that's, you know, when we're talking about the aesthetic of the game, and I mean that in the broad idea of aesthetics versus mechanics and things, is that Balatro doesn't seem to have, it's like a very distinct decision that doesn't have this kind of frame narrative around it. Like a common approach to a game like this, or a roguelike, or a deck builder might have, you know, some kind of setting that you're in, or some characters coming. And even like the, the way that it's tutorial, or whatever you've got, obviously you're a Joker that's explaining things to you. But tell me a little bit about, did you kind of just blast past that decision, and it was never a consideration? Is there, or was it something that explicitly you didn't want to, you know, like you've spoken about keeping it simple being like a touchstone for you, right? Was that part of it? Talk to me about the fact that there isn't no real narrative or anything to the game.

So I've since learned after launching the game that this is something that people seek out in games. Like, in, not in games in general, I understand narrative is a very important part of games, but in deck builder or roguelike games, yes. I always just thought the narrative side of it was, it was a little superfluous, unnecessary, getting in the way sometimes. So it's, it's one of those things where, just like the complexity that I saw in other games, it's just something I wanted to avoid in general. The vibe, kind of like the, the setting and the vibe, I wanted to make really strong. And so I leaned into kind of of the whole weird retro dystopia vibe after I, that started coming together naturally by itself. I started leaning more into that. But I didn't want to make it into like, "You need to save the Joker princess. You need to free Jimbo from his, you know, whatever." I wasn't, that wasn't kind of what I was going for. And it seemed like, not the kinds of things that I enjoy in games anyway. So it's more true to myself if I just kind of lay the mechanics bare, gave it a vibe, and then that's the game itself. And I think people kind of have responded to that.

Yeah, absolutely. It, and I think it's worked really well as a streaming game too, because that stuff doesn't get in the way as well, right?

Right, yeah. Definitely. And that wasn't intentional either. It's not like a, I see that quite a bit too, like, "Oh, this is just like a designed streaming game because you don't have to pause it and there's like no dialogue or whatever." It's no, I just like those games. Um, and I think just happens to to play very well in a in a stream setting where there's a lot of decisions to make and there's not a lot of text to read or a lot of things to listen to where the streamer needs to like be quiet at the same time. So yeah.

All right, let's talk a little bit more about the sort of the infamous late game of Balatro and how crazy it can get. Like, I mean, you're getting scores that are now just, they're just formulas, right? Because you can't even represent the numbers. Talk to me a little bit about how that came about in development and you creating a space for it and clearly leaning into it and then also the reaction from the community. Just talk to me about that whole wild and crazy endgame and and how that came about.

So I think that there's generally, um, in other games, I don't like endless modes that much. So first of all, the game itself is really designed about beating Ante 8, which is like the kind of the final boss, and then that's it. Um, so that's that's where what you're supposed to do. You're just supposed to beat that. But I also dislike in other games how you reach that final endpoint, and you've got this like engine that's just starting to form, and you're, you really want to push it a little further to see how far it can go, but it tells you like, "No, that's as far as you can go." Um, I find that a little frustrating. I know other people think that that's just, it's more satisfying in the long run if you kind of exercise some restraint as a designer. I understand that perspective, but I also think there's another way around it, and that is to allow people to test their crazy engine against an even crazier enemy. So expanding the score so fast that, um, it's incredibly unlikely that you're going to be able to survive very long at all. Uh, because that way, instead of, I think what typically happens in these games that have endless modes that don't scale like logarithmically or exponentially or geometrically, or whatever, I think what happens in those games is you get to a point where you're outpacing the the requirements or you're outpacing the enemies so much that it's just a game of patience, and you end up on the same run for like 15 hours, and you don't play ever again because you feel like you solved the game.

Yeah, because it just, that that one run didn't provide enough of a challenge.

Exactly. Yeah. It's, it gives you too much, um, in one direction. It's like candy for breakfast, a little bit. So instead, make it so that it ends, no matter what. Try again. The point of this game is that you try again. Um, and it's much, I think it's much less frustrating for you to be forced to stop on a defeat than it is for you to be forced to stop on a victory.

Yeah, yeah. I love it. I think, um, it was Alice O'Connor at Rock Paper Shotgun, fantastic writer, um, who proposed the, or who stated the proposition of, you know, you beat Ante 8 and asks if you want to jump into endless, as the game kind of saying, "What do you say? We let this beauty rip and see how much further she can go?" Just sums it up perfectly. That is perfect.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking though, is just like, "Oh, you think you got a good run? Like, okay, we'll see." That's kind of the idea.

It's really great. And it does have that vibe. Obviously, Alice picked up on it, and that's the way that I felt as well when I hit that point.

What, so when you then entered into that, was that kind of like you letting go of kind of responsibility for the player then? They're entering some kind of contract or agreement where they're like, "All right, now I'm just going to go off and, you know, see what she can do," as, um, Alice put it. And then you, you're not too worried about, like, uh, complications in balance or anything at that point? And were you kind of just focused on up until Ante 8? How did you treat that that post-game endless section?

It's such an interesting problem because, um, it's a great question. So there's, there's two things happening in the game, right? There's the Ante 8 game, which everything is balanced around. But then there's also the Ante 8+ game, which it's almost like an entirely different set of, um, strategies and metas that you need to adhere to to make it very far in that world. And because everything's balanced for Ante 8, like the normal endgame, um, it's just a lot more shallow in terms of the gameplay styles that you can really lean into for that, like higher stakes, um, gameplay. And I actually don't really think there's a really good elegant solution to it. If I start making a bunch of things that are only good after Ante 8, then the normal game suffers. So I think there's a lot of give and take there. And ultimately, I think me leaning really hard into one of those ideas is better for the health of the game and more fun. Especially because, like I say this a lot, but I made this game for me. And I end my game after Ante 8, 95% of the time. Only if like there's some crazy new thing that I've never experienced before do I go past Ante 8 to just, you know, see how far this thing can go. Um, so yeah. And and I think a lot of people would be maybe a little upset at that because there are a lot of people that just go past Ante 8 and they want to see how far it can go, and they're frustrated that there's just not like a lot of nuance in the ways that you can play there. But, um, I don't know, I think that's just part of the give and take. I think ultimately, it's a net positive that there is an option to go endless, even if it's a shallower experience than if you were just told you're not allowed to keep going.

Yeah, no, I totally see what you're saying there. Completely agree. Something as well that happens with the endgame that we kind of touched on it before in the vein of game feel and that arcadey, you know, all of the effects that are happening when, you know, well, effects are popping off on cards and everything, but at different speeds and things. But I'm interested in hearing about how you ensured player comprehension of what was going down was still solid at that late game when crazy [ __ ] is happening on screen and everything's popping off and interacting with each other. Did you find that players at that point in the game had such an idea and such a grasp of what their cards were going to do that you didn't have to do much work and that the work that you'd sort of just done on, you know, player comprehension in the earlier stages of the game carried you through? Or were there things like design issues or comprehension issues specifically around like the UX or telegraphing what was going on in play that was happening late game that you needed to solve?

Yeah, there's, there's kind of two different, um, games happening here, um, depending on how much you played. So the first game is, there's all these different items and you're trying to understand what they do and how they interact with each other. You're trying to tease apart how the mechanics work. So you play a hand, you see some numbers flash, it's on, on-x speed as well, so you have time to read and parse exactly what's happening in what order. It will probably take you a little while to figure out exactly like, "Okay, that's what this Joker does." "Okay, that's what this re-trigger means." "Okay, that's what multiplier means," you know? Um, so that's the first game. I think in Balatro is the discovery process of how all these different things work so that you can make a model of all of those things in your mind. And creating that model in your mind is really important because it also allows you, that, you know, you shut the game down, you're going about your life, you're at work, and you think, "Oh, those two things, oh, those would work perfectly together," because you have a model now. You understand how all the puzzle pieces look, and you start putting them together, maybe while you're playing, maybe not while you're playing. And then once you've finally understood the shape of all these different puzzle pieces, um, when you play a hand, you don't even really need to know, you, you don't need to read and parse what's happening because you already know fundamentally what's going on on the screen. It's just fun numbers and fire and and colors at that point. It's just kind of like a victory lap for you. So, so at that point, when you're, you know, at the endgame and there's all this crap going on on the screen, it accelerates the speed at which the, um, all the animations take place because I know that you're not actually really reading everything that's happening on the screen. It's just, um, you know, it's just part of the model in your head. You've already done all the work. So now here's the fireworks, and you get the final number.

Yeah, I love that concept of playing different games as well, and like how you've compartmentalized out like the different kind of loops within the game and how they layer over itself. You know, we we often will talk about loops or layers, but this concept of, you know, the player kind of multitasking different games as they're playing is great.

Yeah, and it's that's my favorite part about roguelikes is like, first of all, interacting with all the fun art and all the fun ideas the first time you see them, and then remembering all of them and combining those ideas when you see a new item and saying like, "Oh, this new item would go really well with that previous item that I saw." I think that's really the sauce in these types of games. So yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Um, all right, let's dive into some more technical stuff here. So, you know, deck-building games are often, like we're talking about all the amazing things that can happen in the way that things interact. Like so the complex state management that's happening in deck-building games and roguelikes. Were there any technical challenges that you specifically faced, you know, managing that game state and all the player data? You know, even though obviously there's no online or anything like that, but any sort of war stories of trouble with that stuff, or was it a pretty smooth run?

Um, I think it's been pretty smooth. I haven't had that many issues. Um, porting was a nightmare, but it, it's always a nightmare for everyone that's ever done a port. So, um, I think in general, it was actually really smooth. It's like implementing touch controls was was weird because it was the first time I ever did that. Yeah. Um, but no, I would say in general, like a deck builder is not the most complicated type of game to create. You just have to make an interface that makes sense and then keep adding things to that kind of set of criteria that you've created. So I can just keep adding Jokers and it's pretty easy for me to do that now. I will say though, at one point, I think the source code was like leaked. It's not obfuscated or anything. But, and someone on Twitter like posted this big long nested if statement and they're like, "Oh my god, I can't believe the Balatro source code." But, you know, at the same time, it works for me.

They're dragging you on main about your source code.

Yeah, they were, they were roasting me. You know, I may have deserved it, but at the same time, it's like, I've got a system and it works. If it's dumb and it works, it's not dumb.

Yeah, look, I'm not a programmer, but one of the first things I learned about programmers when I started in video games is that every programmer thinks most other programmers' code is garbage. So, yeah, I'm sure. Look, their code isn't out there in the world. I'm sure we could find a bunch of programmers to drag them about their source code as well.

Yeah, yeah. Fine though. Okay. What about some, like the weirdest bug you encountered during development? Any wild tales about crazy [ __ ] going down? Bonus point being from something trivial or simple as well, they're my favorite ones.

Um, it's like the biggest one. Um, it actually had a name. It, it was a bug for probably a year. I could not, it was the weirdest thing. I called it the White Whale because it was like my white whale. Um, so that's what everyone in the community called it too, the WW bug. Um, basically, when you're playing the game in the shop, if you have like the normal Joker, that then in the shop, the normal Joker won't be able to show up. It's like it's eliminated from the pool as soon as you get it. And sometimes, very, very rarely, it would still show up. And it was so hard to reproduce. It was like impossible to, um, to diagnose what the problem was until like many months later. Um, it happened on stream while I was in someone's chat, and immediately I was like, "This is it." So I downloaded the VOD and I, I reproduced all the exact steps that that streamer did. And I asked the streamer for his seeds that I could like reproduce it. And finally figured it out. And I, I can't remember exactly what the problem was. It was very stupid though. And, yeah, it's just, I remember that very vividly because there was like a whole lore behind that bug in the community too. So special.

Yeah, that's always fun when you could create some sort of, like, really, really personify some bug as like some hideous villain, some archnemesis of the community and development.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Another great question I like to ask too. Um, what's one piece, I mean, this is your first commercial game, right? Like, it sounds like your first almost like completely finished and shipped video game as well. Um, what's one piece of bad advice that you heard and and specifically ignored during development?

Bad advice that I ignored. Um, I have one that might be a little controversial. You don't have to name the person, by the way. But, yeah, I'd love to hear what it is.

Well, you might know what it is. I, I don't disrespect this person by the way that said this. I won't say who it is, but someone, um, said something about how, um, when you choose the game that you want to make, you should first look at the industry and then pick the pick the genre, like pick a genre of a game that's underserved. And I feel like it's really putting the cart before the horse to do it that way because, um, you should be making a game that you're passionate about. Because if you're not passionate about the game that you're creating, it's not going to be any good anyway. I think you just kind of have to luck into the fact that you enjoy making a game that's going to perform well on the on the market. So yeah. Um, and besides that, I don't know if you should really even concern yourself too much with that if you're like an early, you know, if you're just making games and you're not, you don't have aspirations to like make it a career yet. If you're just trying to learn, just make games that you love, and then you'll create your own voice for that.

So, um, what the first thing that happened when I, you know, went public is I was just shocked at the amount of, uh, business strategy that goes into game development because I just never been exposed to a lot of it before. And I thought I'd done something terrible, terribly wrong because of that. But looking back, I'm glad that I, I did things the way that I did.

Yeah. Hell yeah. I think I read in an interview you once saying that you, you hadn't even emailed anyone about the game.

Yeah, like, I wasn't, I wasn't telling streamers about it. No.

Yeah. I love it. It's because, you know, you speak about looking into things, and I think, you know, there's there's a beautiful lesson here. Like, I mean, obviously, there's a bit of survivor bias and stuff that we could fall into too, but like, this, you've clearly just developed a game and followed your love for it, and it's happened to be in that perfect position where it was, you know, was serving a huge market that was just waiting for something like Balatro to come along.

Yeah. And, you know, since I was, I do feel like an outsider still to the to the industry in a lot of ways. And since I was, especially leading up to that point, I'm just kind of now coming to terms of how, um, how big it really was. Um, I, I didn't think that this was like that crazy of a thing to happen. And then, you know, as time goes on, I look back and I see how some of my peers are doing and how other games are doing on the market, and it's, it's just shocking to me. Like, I don't know, I just, the more time goes on, I'm just like, "What was so special about my game? I really don't get how it performs so well critically, um, to deserve this." Like, I've played a lot too, and I like it, but I don't know if it has the mass appeal that, like, it clearly does. So it's just, it's baffling to me. The whole thing is still baffling to me. And the more context I, I get, the more baffling it seems.

I love that. I won't name the game or the developers, but I had some friends, um, visiting Melbourne, and they, this was a number of years ago, and they just shipped a game, huge, huge AAA game that was getting like Metacritic in the '90s. Um, and, you know, it was the first, the studio had had big hits before, but this was like the first like critical and commercial success, like bigger than anything they'd done. And when they're in Mel, we went out for lunch, and I was like, "Oh, what's, what's next?" And they were like, "Oh, we're doing a sequel." And I was like, "Oh, wow, that's really exciting." And I could see on their faces that they were not excited. When I asked why, they were like, "Because we have no idea how the first one met a critic at 95, whatever it was. Like, we thought the game was terrible. We have no idea how people like thought it was that good. And now we've got to repeat the process." And they ended up doing so. Um, but like, yeah, man, it's, I, I, I've heard from other developers who've, you know, sort of reached that point where you're like, "Oh my god, okay, I knew I was onto something, but I didn't know it was going to resonate that well."

Yeah, well, there's just so many stories of like that I can think back on in my own journey that are just, I really do believe a lot of it was luck. And I think, like, can I, I don't know if I can do that again. Like, that's not, shouldn't be the goal anyway. And I don't think that would be the goal. Like, I even sometimes think, like, "Oh, I should just like flip a coin and whether or not I even release my next game. I should just make it and then put it in a folder, keep it there." Just like, delete the library if it like comes up tails or something. Yeah, like, because that's not, I feel like that's, I got to hold on to that because that's really not what it's about. And then that's probably the way that I can make something good, yeah, again, is by, you know, keeping the same process that I've always had. So yeah.

Well, I'm not sure to friends who have had similar degrees of success as you, especially ones that have come from like really humble indie beginnings or like they've had a huge astronomical success like this, you know, culturally and commercially. And the pressure to like then deliver on the sophomore, it's like, you're the guy, you're the person who created, you know, Balatro. Um, what's next? What's going to happen? Like, you're the notion that for you, games is a journey rather than a destination. And like, what you've done to protect that for yourself and set those boundaries and take some time and, you know, even things like, you know, protecting your identity and things like it's, um, I, I imagine that pressure must be immense, but surely it sounds like you're starting off in a really great direction there by, you know, already your your motivations for making games are in the right place.

I hope so. Um, these are all kind of prophylactic things too. Like, I'm doing these things because I know I probably should, but I also do feel the pull to like, um, get stuck working on a particular thing because that's what, you know, it's, it will be successful if we do it that way, right? Yeah. There's a lot of pressure to do it like that. So, so like, for example, I'm working on, uh, a big update for the game for 2025, like a big content update. Um, I'm not going to reveal too much about it here, but, um, I do still genuinely enjoy working on this game. But I still have some of the same thoughts and fears about, like, "How's this going to be received?" You know, "Am I going to be able to do what I did before with with this update?" "Should I even be thinking about those things?" Is that just getting in the way of of the process? So yeah, I still struggle with those.

I was going to ask you, you know, usually I might ask people sort of what's next, but the way I was going to phrase that question for you was, are you still enjoying working on Balatro? And I guess what are the elements, if so, what is it that you enjoy in this process of or this stage of development then, you know, as opposed to what you would enjoy pre-release?

Um, yes, I'm still enjoying it. When I was doing the mobile port, I definitely was not enjoying it. I think I was, I was definitely burnt out on that part of it. Yeah. Um, but at this point, I'm back into like the bread and butter of why I was making this game in the first place. I get to do art, I get to come up with creative ideas. I feel like I get to surprise people now, which is fun. That's something I never really experienced before. Um, so yeah, I'm like, I, I love this job. And I'm sure once I stop loving it, I will stop. But it seems like one of those things where if I can keep this design and implementation, uh, habit that I've created, I think I can work on it for a long time and still love it. So yeah. Um, I do feel like I'm going into the unknown a little bit because this will now be the longest project I've ever worked on. And I don't really have any plans of stopping anytime soon either. So I don't know what that means necessarily for my motivation, if it's, if it's going to be any different, if it's going to be easier. Um, I'm just, I don't know, I'm just excited for it.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Well, like, not so much talking about what's next, but sort of what, like, how is this going to shape your development, whether it be on Balatro or other things moving forward? I think an interesting question I ask at this point is, how's working on Balatro influenced your approach to game design or your development philosophy going forward? Like, is there a new design philosophy or truism that you've learned on this project that you'll be taking forward?

Uh, yeah, definitely. Um, if I'm making another public commercial project, I want to involve, um, players, playtesters, that kind of thing, earlier in the design process. Interesting. Um, because they're, they're such a good tool for, uh, they're a good barometer for [ __ ]. They, they will be able to sniff it out immediately if something doesn't work. They won't be hesitant to tell you it doesn't work. Um, a lot, a lot better than like showing friends and family, because friends and family, it doesn't matter how awful it is, they'll just be proud of you that you made something. But the general public, like your intended target audience, will be ruthless. And that's exactly what you need. Um, and it took me a year and a half before I started getting that kind of feedback. And it probably would have gone a lot quicker if I involved those people earlier in the process. So whatever my next game is, um, that's a lesson I will definitely take away.

Get people involved in the creation process earlier to challenge that. That's really interesting. For a second, it does sound like a bunch of the success that you either lucked your way into or have found through this project, um, yourself, has been the fact that when you went to the community, there was quite like a strong design base for this game already. Do you find that there's a, and so it's interesting to me that you do want to bring them on earlier. I'm not saying obviously it's a bad decision or anything, but like to unpack that a little bit. Do, where do you find the balance for yourself, at least in, you know, or potentially in development for going to a community with something having a strong base that is enough there for them to chew on, and when you say bring them in earlier in the development phase, but sort of what more specifically are, are you thinking in regards to phase of development?

Yeah, so there is like a specific kind of point I'm thinking here, and that's, um, cuz you're right, you don't want to involve them so early that it just kind of gets beige, right? You don't want them to design like the core of your game for you. Yeah. What I mean by that is like, by the time I had these people involved, I already had like 90 Jokers implemented, right? Okay. And implementing that much content before you're sure that the system is even worthwhile is dangerous because that's like a lot of wasted potential time if you just need to cut it. So I would have saved a lot of time if I made all of these different mechanics and then added just enough content for people to start playing it and test it to see whether or not I want to keep those different, um, interlocking mechanics before I start implementing a whole bunch of content for them. So, so yeah, I do think like, keep it a secret until you have a prototype, a a fully functional prototype, but not so long that you need to throw a whole bunch of crap in the garbage if something goes wrong. Uh, I think there is a balance there, though, you're right. Definitely.

Yeah, yeah. All right, cool. Um, all right, I think a a couple questions maybe to round it out, especially considering that you're obviously the artist of this project and hearing about your art background and the joy that illustrating and creating the art for new Jokers brings you. What are your favorite Jokers? And maybe let's, let's do it from an aesthetic perspective, like the visuals, or the treatment of them, and then maybe a couple you can throw me like just fun effects or something like that. Is that right?

So I...

I have a special place in my heart for the two banana jokers in the game. Um, I, I just like making there's something really fun about coming up with an idea for a joker and then coming up with art that fits it or vice versa. It's always so like natural and uh, organic when that happens. And the banana ones are just, they're these, it's this anecdote that I've, I've always loved to tell people, like, "Oh, you know about the Gros Michel banana?" Like, you know, the flavor of banana candy that's not actually based on the banana that you know, it's from the banana from the 50s. Um, so I'm just like a giant nerd, basically. But, um, so I love that anecdote and I was like, "Oh, I want to put that in the game." Uh, so I made, you know, the banana art and I think it's hilarious and I think it's like a fan favorite as well, both of the bananas. Yeah.

I really like that one. I like, um, what's another one? Dusk. It's like, uh, this, this evening scene in the, in the desert. It's based on, uh, I did a road trip down to, I used to have this, this Toyota Previa van that I converted into a camper and me and my partner, we drove down to Arizona and, uh, we spent a couple nights in the, in the National Forest there amongst a bunch of cacti. And that's, it's kind of tattooed on my brain, that that scene. So based on that, it also has that one has a real, you know, when we talk about the memories that we have of playing cards and everything, for some reason, like that kind of imagery on like a deck of playing cards, you know, like say you're, you stop at some Roadhouse in the Arizona desert and they might be selling like a deck of cards that has backs or something. It's, um, yeah, it's, it's funny. It doesn't, it's obviously not a playing card face, but it, it still feels very at home on a playing card. Yeah.

Yeah, I like, I try and put so many of my, like, most of these ideas for these playing cards, they come from my life. Like there, there things that have happened to me or people that I know or images that I've seen. Um, and it's over the course of like, you know, two and a half years that I was making these Jokers, there's a lot of life that I experienced while I was making these and it all kind of went into the game. So, um, the Jokers are all just local thk deep law, basically. Honestly, yeah, basically that's what they all are. It's, um, you know, I, we grew a bunch of black beans in our garden and that's why I came up with the idea for Turtle Bean, is one of the Jokers. Um, or, um, ice cream. It was like a super hot day and I was really craving some ice cream, so I thought I would, I would draw the Joker. Um, I don't know, it's just like, there's all sorts of little, every Joker probably has a little anecdote associated with it with the reason why I came up with that idea. Usually it's kind of dumb, but like, if it's executed well, I don't think that those anecdotes are are dumb. I think they're kind of interesting and they give it flavor and I'm kind of the thing that ties them all together. So they do feel like they're all tied together at the same time. So, so yeah, um, they contribute to that artistic voice that I was talking about earlier.

And there's also, you know, we were also discussing the the construct or the concept and of a card and how much like a playing card and how much that's in the player's mind. So it's, it's weirdly powerful when there are Jokers that issue that that form of a playing card too. Like say the to-do list or, right, the golden ticket or things like that. Even the one that's, I forget the name of it, but that's ripped in half. I remember seeing that the first time and I was like, "Oh, whoa, cool." It kind of, you know, opened up a world of possibility in this small but meaningful way for the game. Yeah.

And, like the design of the Jokers is, I spent such a long time on it and it's like character design almost. Yeah. But yeah, no, and I know the vibe you're talking about too, like they definitely kind of have like the, the silly playing card lore feel to them. Um, I had all these rules too, like one of the rules was, uh, the word Joker has to actually show up on every card. So like the to-do list, the first letter of each of the things on the to-do list spell out the word Joker. Oh, of course. I hadn't even clicked with that. That's so good. Yeah. So I had all these like weird design rules and, um, I was still able to play around with it so much and fit a lot of my life into it. So, so visually, those are my favorite things. Effect wise, there's some really, like my favorite one by far is, uh, pareidolia, which is like when you look at a tree or a cloud and you see like a face because humans are really good at picking up, um, really, really good at picking up patterns of seeing faces and things. And the cards on, like, it's pareidolia itself has a bunch of playing cards arranged in the shape of a face and it makes all cards face cards. So it, it tied in so organically with the effect. Um, that's definitely one of my favorite all-around Joker design ideas, just so perfectly. Very cool.

Well, yeah, it's amazing how people have taken to them. And, you know, you were talking before about expectations on your new update, but I mean, the packs that came out recently with, you know, like the different artwork and it's obviously they're just aesthetic, you know, um, new playing cards, um, which is such an obviously brilliant idea and it's right there, right? But the various games and bringing, bringing those IP into into Malro, like seeing that receive so well and seeing it integrate so seamlessly into the experience is just so cool. Yeah, that was probably the coolest experience in all this is like these people that I've always looked up to, like Ed MCM and ConcernedApe and the Slay the Spire people and the Among Us team and everyone, CDPR. And like being able to go into meetings and and meet these people and talk, you know, we were able to talk design with some of these people. And like ConcernedApe made the art for, for that set of cards. He's like a fan of, of my game. I'm like a huge fan of his game. It just, every developer, solo developer, development team that I've interfaced with over the past year, especially with these collabs, they're just so willing to give. Um, they just want to be part of this big collective experience. I just think it's so cool that we were able to do this for free and everyone's just so on board with it. Everyone's just so psyched about it and players love it and I love that I'm able to share, you know, some of these games that I love in this really unique way. Um, yeah, it's been great. Yeah.

It's something in video games that I think we really take for granted. And especially I feel so privileged on this podcast talking to, you know, folks like yourself and the other guests that we have, is when you're a developer in video games, and I kind of want to say like, at almost any level, you don't even have to have the degree of success that you've had. Obviously, it opens doors for you and this podcast is a function, opens doors for me as well to be able to speak with these people, have these conversations. But video games, so many of our heroes are so accessible. And not only that, but so many of them are so, there's just something about game development and its hobbyist, I think, its humble beginnings as a hobbyist sort of endeavor. And, you know, the fact that maybe it was like, um, land-based and relegated out of main pop culture for so long, but, um, I think everyone is so accessible. I sometimes I sit around, you know, like at industry events or I'll be at a dinner with some folks or hanging out with friends or whatever, and I look around and I'm like, these people are kind of like the Spielberg or the Terrence Malick or like the Kurosawa of video games, and they're just like my friends. Or like, I'm going to hang with the Tom Green, oh, the sorry, the Tom Yorke of video games today, and they're just totally accessible to us. It's wild. It's really, we're really privileged to have. Yeah.

I know what you mean. It's, I've been just shocked at like how down to earth and how willing to just talk about whatever, like all these big names that I've seen are. And, um, even, yeah, just anyone that I talk to in the industry, doesn't matter how, how much success they've seen, it just seems like everyone gets it. It's just, I think the fact that it's kind of like traumatic, a lot of parts this are traumatic. People come together through trauma. And I think everyone kind of understands like this, yeah, this kind of sucks in a lot of ways, but we're, we're in it together and we know how it goes and we want to all help each other. So yeah.

It's funny that you say that because the reason that I've always thought that it would be the case or one of the main reasons as well is because we have a common enemy, which is this thing we're talking about before, which is just shipping the [ __ ] game. It's so, so like, as you've mentioned, sure, it's traumatic, but even just the difficulty level of it and the fact it feels like we're really in this, it feels like a PVE experience as opposed to a PVP experience, that's for sure. Yeah.

I think a lot of people in game dev realize that it's not about like how successful the game is. It's just the accomplishment is shipping a game. It's finishing it to 1.0. It's whether or not it's successful. It's, it doesn't make it any easier or harder, um, to ship the actual game itself. Like, like a game that ships is, you know, it's, it's worth a ton of respect. So I think that's why people respect each other so much regardless of, you know, the, how, how big they've gotten in in the industry. So.

Well, I think there's probably no better segue to wrap up this podcast than we're going to find there. So on that note, uh, congratulations, local th, on first of all, shipping your first commercial game, on the success it's had, um, whether that be commercially, obviously, culturally, the huge impact it's had, or critically, which it's funny to hear you don't agree with, like, really phenomenal work. And thank you so much for being so generous with your time and so, um, vulnerable and open in sharing your development experience and your thoughts about the game. It's just been wonderful chatting with you. Yeah, you too. This has been great. Thanks for having me. Of course. All right. Have a wonderful day. You too.