Balatro was only supposed to have 120 jokers but ‘instead of correcting’ a publisher mistake, LocalThunk ‘just made 30 more’ of them

In a divine act of people-pleasing that resonates with me to an uncomfortable degree, Balatro creator LocalThunk has revealed the game was only meant to release with 120 jokers but a publisher flub had him adding an extra 30 instead of, you know, correct anybody.

As spotted by TheGamer, LocalThunk dropped the fun little lore nugget on Twitter, writing: “I once told Playstack (my publisher) that the full version of Balatro would have 120 Jokers. In a meeting later that week they mentioned something about ‘150 Jokers’ and instead of correcting them I just made 30 more Jokers lmao”.

As for which ones were the last-minute additions, LocalThunk says he “can’t remember all of them,” but shared a screenshot where “most of this page would be in the ether” had he spoken up. There are some right bangers here, too: I am a certified Spare Trousers enjoyer as someone who unintentionally ends up in a Two Pair run more often than I’d care to admit, the Popcorn joker is a great early game pick while you’re still feeling out the build, and the Baseball Card joker has contributed to some stellar scores on my part.

As a lot of the replies point out, it’s hard to imagine a Balatro where a lot of these jokers don’t exist. As for whether LocalThunk had some backup ideas ready to go when all of this occurred, he told another Twitter user: “nah I didn’t life finds a way”. I’m not sure what kind of timescale LocalThunk was working to when having to conjure up 30 entirely new modifiers, but life finding a way would, for me, definitely be “multiple hours of panic and writer’s block until I pulled something out of the bag at the last minute.”

If you haven’t played Balatro yet, what the hell are you doing? It’s easily been one of the hottest games over at PC Gamer this year—Chris Livingston was championing it back before it was even released, and some of our resident Balatro freaks have clocked a good few hundred hours. Abbie Stone awarded Balatro a 91 in her review, writing: “This is an absolute triumph, the reason Valve should rename their handheld ‘the Balatro machine’. That it’s the developer’s first game is just rude, frankly, equivalent to going to Vegas and drawing a Royal Flush first time.”