LocalThunk had made hobby games in the past, but realized Balatro was something special when a friend revealed he had played it for '20, 30, or 40' hours - Related to but, played, success, lifestyle, it

Balatro's Breakout Success Hasn't Changed Creator's Lifestyle Much

Balatro, the dangerously addictive poker-like from anonymous indie dev LocalThunk, has sold over five million copies, raking in millions of dalloars in revenue, over $[website] million earned on mobile alone. In addition to multiple GotY nominations, Balatro enjoys one of the most fanatical, devoted fanbases we've yet observed; despite it all, fame and fortune haven't changed the life of its creator much.

In an interview with Bloomberg (thanks, TheGamer), the famously private developer revealed that he was able to quit his day job in IT and purchased a house for himself and his partner. Aside from a little travel, however, the great work of Balatro must go on:

"It's been a lot of stress, but very fulfilling, being able to walk on something that I love all day, every day, as long as I want. We'd been living below our means anyway when I had that IT job, so our lifestyle hasn't changed all that much. I travel a little more so I can visit friends. I'm just trying to be responsible right now with anything. I still have a job to do."

So what does the future hold? Balatro's [website] modification is in the works, but LocalThunk says, "It's healthier for the game that I keep my cards close to my chest" regarding the details. Beyond that, he doesn't have "any imminent game ideas" and will continue working on the title that changed his life forever. In the grand tradition of the greatest indie devs, he wants to give back to the community that made it all possible.

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Magic: The Gathering's interplanar Wacky Wheels set is good actually

Last year we had a murder mystery expansion for Magic: The Gathering, followed by a Wild West one. As the cynics put it, they were "Magic in detective hats" and "Magic in cowboy hats". Now, with the Aetherdrift set basically being themed around Speed Racer and Twisted Metal, the cynics say this is "Magic in a racing helmet," when what the people really want (for "the people" read "cranky Redditbros") is more trad fantasy.

This rings false to me. For starters, we just had Foundations, a set that went back to the game's original inspirations and in some cases the original cards, a set with plenty of dragons and angels and swords being turned into ploughshares. If it's trad fantasy you're after, you'll eat well at the Foundations table. Aetherdrift is for those who crave variety, who don't want to eat the same high fantasy meal every night of the week.

And, as someone who only got seriously into collecting Magic rather than just playing the digital versions with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty—a fully cyberpunk set with mechs and cards like Born to Drive—the idea of magical Carmageddon doesn't seem too far out there. Magic's multiverse clearly isn't full of worlds that conveniently stopped advancing at the medieval period (New Capenna is blatantly the 1920s with demons), so bring on the Wacky Wheels, I say, and the wackier the improved.

I went to a prerelease event at one of my local gaming stores, Plenty of Games in Melbourne, to take Aetherdrift for a test drive. The good thing about these prerelease events is how casual they are. While the hosts do call time so you can end your first match and play someone else, my table cheerfully ignored that and instead played a four-player game that lasted the entire evening, which felt more on-theme for a race than a series of one-on-one duels would.

Playing sealed meant opening a selection of boosters and building decks from what was available. I was tempted to build a black deck around Pactdoll Terror, a toy car piloted by a killer doll, which gives you a point of life and takes one from all your opponents when you play an artifact. There are plenty of artifact cards in Aetherdrift, mostly vehicles, but instead I decided to build a deck to test out the new speed mechanic.

When you play a card with "Start your engines!" on it you gain a speed of one, and it increases one point per turn if you damage an opponent. At max speed, which is four, various card-dependent effects trigger. My deck's Walking Sarcophagus went from a 2/1 to a 3/3 for instance, and my Aether Syphon forced everyone else to mill two cards whenever I drew one. One of the other players went for a similar tactic, Aether Syphon and all, but because I hit max speed before them I was confident I'd mill everyone else to death first.

I hadn't counted on the player sat across from me having Push the Limit, a card that returns all your vehicles and mounts from the discard pile to the table, and lets them attack without crew that turn. We'd been filling his discard pile for several turns, helpfully loading bullets into a gun he then turned around and fired at the rest of us. The cards you get back with Push the Limit have to be discarded again at the end of the turn, but that one big swing wiped out one player and reduced the rest of us to our last few life points.

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It didn't win him the game, though. The player sitting in the far corner had not long before played Pactdoll Terror, and then she efficiently drained everyone else's final life points by following it with a handful of artifacts in a row. I could only applaud. It was a classic tortoise-and-hare situation, with the least assuming racer crossing the finish line while everyone else had their engines betray them on the home stretch. A perfect marriage of theme and mechanics.

(Aetherdrift has a surprisingly in-depth connection to the lore as well, with narrative designer Miguel Lopez really going to town on the worldbuilding side of things.).

Aetherdrift will be out in Arena from February 11, and in paper Magic from February 14. You can find in-store events at your local participating retailer.

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LocalThunk had made hobby games in the past, but realized Balatro was something special when a friend revealed he had played it for '20, 30, or 40' hours

In a recent Bloomberg interview with Balatro creator LocalThunk, the notably private, anonymous developer opened up a little bit about the roguelike card game's origins, including how he first realized he was on to something special with what had started as just another hobby project.

LocalThunk worked in IT before making Balatro, and was apparently a bit of a hobbyist developer, never releasing anything commercially or even publicly, but sharing games with friends and family to the tune of that devastatingly polite disinterest artists, writers, and other creative types are so familiar with; "Oh that's really nice, say whatever happened to going back to school?"

LocalThunk once again cited the Cantonese card game Big Two and the roguelike Luck Be a Landlord as major influences on Balatro, with development having begun at the end of 2021. Unlike LocalThunk's prior projects, his Balatro prototypes garnered a different response among playtesters. “I had a friend play, and he revealed, ‘Yeah, I really liked that game you sent over. I played it for 20, 30, or 40’—I can’t remember the number, but a lot of hours,” LocalThunk told Bloomberg. “I was thinking, ‘What on earth?’ There must be something here if he was playing it for that long.”.

The rest, as they say, is history. LocalThunk continued to develop and iterate on Balatro while connecting with UK-based publisher, Playstack. The roguelite Poker-like is now a genuine phenomenon, and snagged both a 91% review score and 2024's overall game of the year award from us here at PC Gamer. In addition to maintaining his privacy, LocalThunk doesn't seem to have let the success change his life much, just quitting his IT job to work on gamedev full time and buying a house with his partner. As for what's next, LocalThunk continues to work on Balatro's big [website] modification, and hasn't ruled out continuing to tinker on the game after that.

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