When a video game has lots of success right off the bat, sometimes things get weird — strange breakdowns in communication with the audience, for example, or hitches in the code that put people off of the experience en masse. Luckily for Balatro, the hit poker-inspired roguelike currently available on Steam and modern consoles, things have been pretty chill. Folks keep drawing cards, buying jokers, and putting up incredibly high scores. But that doesn’t mean that LocalThunk, the game’s singular developer, is resting on his laurels.
On Wednesday, LocalThunk announced that Balatro’s “first major gameplay update” is due to be released some time in 2025. We were able to get the developer on a video conference the very next day, and while we still don’t know what’s going to be in the update (trust me, I asked), we did get just a little bit behind LocalThunk’s process for making it. Fans shouldn’t expect it to feel like a sequel. Likewise, there won’t be a big button on the main menu with options for “New Balatro” and “Old Balatro.” It’s still going to be the same game, with the same kind of front end. But, LocalThunk said, it is going to feel a lot bigger than the game that launched in February 2024.
The first major gameplay update is coming to Balatro in 2025!
This update will bring new ideas and strategies to the game and as a token of huge appreciation to the game’s brilliant and passionate community, the update will be completely free. pic.twitter.com/xS8ZQrTZGi
— Balatro (@BalatroGame) August 7, 2024
“It won’t be fundamentally different,” LocalThunk told sbjelectronics. “You’re still going to be playing Balatro. I don’t want this game to be two games, and just one day it switches [over].
“I still have a really strong vision,” he continued, “so I’m just thinking of extending that vision to, I think, its logical bounds instead of shifting directions into a different type of game that I also like. Definitely, I’m thinking more about filling out the design space that currently exists, and then extending that design space in interesting directions that I think people are going to love.”
Will there be more jokers in the game? Smart money says yes, yes there will be. And maybe we’ll see them even sooner than next year. On X, the game’s official account also teased “two more surprises” coming later this summer. But what LocalThunk wants fans to understand is that all of these add-ons and tweaks coming to Balatro will be 100% free — guaranteed.
Why? Well, for one it’s just good marketing.
“People are going to start playing it again,” LocalThunk said. “They’ll bring new people into the game. It might end up selling more copies that way. Who knows? But the first point, I think, is the most important to me, and I think it fits with the whole ethos behind this game: I don’t ever want microtransactions or anything like that in the game. I love that it’s just a single price tag, and you get the whole designed experience for that amount of money.”
Fans clearly love that ethos as well, to the tune of something like $20 million. As for the future of Balatro, LocalThunk said that he’s looking forward to working on the game for many years to come. But finding the joy in that work will be key to his continued involvement on the project.
“I’ve been making games for 10 years, always after school when I was in university, or after work. It was a hobby,” LocalThunk said. “Then all of a sudden, one day, it became my job, and there were no limits anymore. At one point I was working 12 or 14 hours a day, every day, and my health really started to suffer. […] It was definitely not sustainable.”
The experience, coming close to burn-out but not quite leaning all the way over that line, has given LocalThunk a different perspective.
We have two more surprises this summer, keep an eye out for some more exciting news!
— Balatro (@BalatroGame) August 7, 2024
“I will not work on this if I don’t enjoy it anymore,” LocalThunk said. “I think that’s kind of a reasonable thing [to expect from a creator]. I’m not going to keep working on it if I hate it, because it’s just not going to be good.”
And what about the version of Balatro that’s coming to mobile devices? It’s still in the works, LocalThunk confirmed. When there’s more to announce, he said fans should expect to hear about it via the game’s official feed on X. To give more direct feedback, consider the official Discord.
