After selling 1 million copies, Balatro creator admits it's "held together with hopes and dreams" as game devs rally around the roguelike's beautifully nightmarish code

Apr. 24, 2024

“If it’s dumb and it works then it’s not dumb!”

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The original tweet that spawned all this discourse has since been deleted - probably smart - but the gist is that Balatro has bespoke code for many objects where modern programming standards would typically suggest that you build some universal ways of handling those objects. That is agrossoversimplification, and thisbreakdown from game developer Sean Barrettwill give you a much smarter overview of what’s happening here, but that’s the gist.

Balatro developer LocalThunk has been quick to cop to the idea that the game’s code is messy,noting thatit’s “held together with hopes and dreams” andjoking that"they won’t teach you that in a fancy Software Engineering course." But game developers are rallying around the idea that it’s never really been about creating clean code - if it works, then that’s enough.

Ultimately, that’s whatLocalThunk figures, too. “It’s not perfect but I know where every single thing is and I’m the only one that needs to maintain it, so it makes sense to me. If it’s dumb and it works then it’s not dumb!”

Wespoke with LocalThunk about Balatro’s ingenious twists on pokerearlier this year.

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