LocalThunk, 'instead' of correcting a mistake made by a publisher, 'just added 30 jokers' to Balatro

LocalThunk, the creator of Balatro, revealed that the game was originally only intended to have 120 jokers, but a publisher error led him to add an extra 30 instead.

LocalThunk, as spotted by TheGamer on Twitter, dropped the fun little nugget of lore. He wrote: "I told Playstack, my publisher, that the full version Balatro will have 120 Jokers. In a later meeting, they said something about '150 jokers' and I didn't correct them. Instead, I made 30 more jokers lmao.

LocalThunk, who hasn't spoken up about the last-minute additions to the page, says he can't recall them all. However, he shared a screenshot showing that "most of the page would have been in the ether," had he not spoken up. The list also includes some real winners: I am a Spare Trousers fan, as I find myself in Two Pair runs more often than I care to admit. The Popcorn joker makes a great pick for early games, while you are still figuring out your build. And the Baseball Card joker helped me score some high scores.

As many of the replies have pointed out, it is hard to imagine a Balatro without a number of these jokers. LocalThunk replied to another Twitter user that he didn't have any backup ideas when this all happened. "Nah, life finds a ways". I don't know what kind of deadline LocalThunk had to meet when he was asked to come up with 30 new modifiers. But for me, life finding a ways would be "multiple days of panic and writer’s block" until I found something at the last moment.

What the hell are YOU doing if you haven't yet played Balatro? It's been one of the most popular games at PC Gamer in this year. Chris Livingston was a fan of it even before its release, and many of our resident Balatro fans have played it for hundreds of hours. Abbie Stone gave Balatro an impressive 91 out of 100 in her review. She wrote: "This is a triumph, and the reason Valve's handheld should be renamed 'the Balatro Machine'." It's rude to say that it's their first game. It's like going to Vegas for the first time and drawing a Royal Flush.