Indie developer LocalThunk and publisher Playstack have announced a major milestone for their roguelike card gameBalatro. About 11 months after its initial release in February 2024, the game has managed to sell 5 million units, an astonishing feat that isn’t common for indie developers.
A Deal with the Devil
Balatro is a unique deckbuilder experience that has players using illegal poker hands to break the game and score massive wins. It’s a unique spin on the genre that’s easy to understand, but the entire loop is ridiculously addictive, and Balatro aims at making the whole experience feel psychodelic rather than just a regular poker game.
Each run will let players test out different possibilities with jokers that can create unique synergies and drastically change the possibilities. Losing isn’t the end, as players will be able to unlock more hand options and take challenges with smarter options. There are eight difficulty options and challenge runs to try out, with players having the chance to test out their luck against specific seeds.
Review: Balatro
Simple to get into, hard to put down, Balatro’s endless possibilities result in one of the best and most rewarding takes on deck-building yet.
In our review for the game, which had a rare perfect score, Jordan Helm regarded it as expertly-crafted and one of the best experiences in 2024. While he considered the Boss Blinds to be a potential frustration, the polish and synergy of the whole experience had him engaged enough to not consider this a big issue and just keep replaying it.
Multiple awards have also recognized the high quality of the game. One good example of this is that the title was nominated for Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game and Best Mobile Game atThe Game Awards2024. Out of all of those, it managed to take the latter three awards home, whileAstro Botwon the first two.
Curiously, the developers make it a point to regard the new players who got the game after the event in their new post on X (formerly Twitter). As such, it’s safe to assume that the last few days after the award event pushed the sales towards the big milestone number they reached.
The developers also humorously direct their players to check out other indie games in case this is their first time picking one to play. As part of the industry, they point out that independent developers get to create impressive titles and encourage new players to give them a try and find out those other gems.
Multiple awards have also recognized the high quality of the game. One good example of this is that the title was nominated for Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2024.
Balatro is currently available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and mobile devices with Android and iOS receiving the game in September, some months after the other systems. The sales figure takes into account the combined total of all platforms.
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