All posts tagged: Balatros

Why Balatro’s developer stays anonymous

Why Balatro’s developer stays anonymous

Published by Webster

Balatro just won four Game Developers Choice Awards, including Game of the Year, but the person who made the game wasn’t on stage to accept them. Instead, Playstack communications director Wout van Haldren spoke on behalf of Balatro’s developer, who goes by the alias LocalThunk, each time the game won an award. “The team does that to give LocalThunk the freedom to work in the style that he likes, which we respect,” Playstack marketing director Liz Cheng-Moore tells The Verge. “That’s our job,” van Haldren adds. It’s an arrangement that the Playstack team figured out with LocalThunk ahead of other ceremonies like The Game Awards, where Balatro won three awards and was nominated for Game of the Year. LocalThunk didn’t want to be public, but he also didn’t want to be disrespectful to fans and the industry, so now the Playstack team accepts his awards on his behalf. LocalThunk was at the Game Developers Conference this week meeting with other developers, but van Haldren and Cheng-Moore think he’ll generally remain anonymous to the public. It’s …

Balatro’s creator isn’t happy about the game’s 18-plus rating in Europe

Balatro’s creator isn’t happy about the game’s 18-plus rating in Europe

Published by Webster

The creator of the poker roguelike Balatro, who goes by the alias LocalThunk, has been sharing some frustrations over the game’s 18-plus rating in Europe. “Since PEGI gave us an 18-plus rating for having evil playing cards maybe I should add microtransactions / loot boxes / real gambling to lower that rating to 3-plus like EA Sports FC,” LocalThunk posted on X over the weekend. Balatro’s 18-plus rating isn’t new. The game was originally rated 3-plus, but shortly after its February launch, PEGI bumped it up to 18-plus, as spelled out at the time by Playstack, Balatro’s publisher. The game was briefly delisted from “a number of digital stores in some countries” as a result. According to PEGI’s page for Balatro, the rating was given because the game “features prominent gambling imagery.” PEGI also spells out the following “content specific issues”: This game teaches — by way of images, information and gameplay — skills and knowledge that are used in poker. During gameplay, the player is rewarded with ‘chips’ for playing certain hands. The player …

Now that Balatro’s on mobile, here are some tips to get started

Published by Webster

Now that Balatro is out on mobile, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And while it’s a great game, its tutorial doesn’t do the best job of setting you up for the kind of success necessary to hook you. In my first few hours, though I was completing the objectives laid out, it felt like I was stumbling my way to success instead of achieving it through strategy. Onboarding was a bit too abrupt, focused on the barebones of how to play instead of blending that with tips on how to play effectively. With that in mind, here’s some useful info and tips on how to get started. I was told there would be no math In Balatro, the main gameplay loop is amassing enough poker chips to beat a set chip total called a blind. To do that, you must create the ideal poker hand that maximizes the number of chips you can earn. I think what I initially had so much trouble with was understanding how scoring worked. Numbers …