Balatro creator reflected on dropping out to make games

Even two years after release, Balatro remains one of the biggest and best roguelikes, and its creator LocalThunk has kept a low profile despite the game selling millions of copies and scoring crossover after crossover. In an anniversary blog post titled "Bad Grades," LocalThunk looked back on his early steps into game development.

"I think about that version of myself a lot now," he wrote. "I didn’t know what was coming and even if I could warn myself I’m not sure what I could have said to prepare for the insanity. I’m not even sure if there’s a lesson to learn." His first game was a four-word ladder game in command line, something he made during an Intro to Computer Science class.

He "wasn't a good student" by his own admission, but that project convinced him to drop out of the engineering program and pursue a degree in programming, a choice that set his education back a year. LocalThunk said the switch felt natural: "It was hardly a choice at all," he wrote.

balatro, localthunk, roguelike, game development, blog post, bad grades, drop out, computer science, command line, millions sold