Balatro News

Hello everyone,

We want to express our sincere appreciation to each and every one of you who participated in the Balatro demo. The response has been phenomenal, with nearly 100,000 downloads (currently at 99K!), and it's all thanks to your enthusiasm and support.

As we approach the conclusion of December, we will be wrapping up this demo phase. The invaluable feedback and suggestions from this passionate community have played a pivotal role in shaping Balatro for the better. Your insights have provided us with a wealth of information, and we are eager to implement improvements based on your thoughtful contributions. If you have any additional feedback or suggestions, we encourage you to join our Discord channel and share your thoughts with us!

Behind the scenes, exciting developments are underway, and we have something special in store for you in January! Stay tuned for more details.

Once again, a sincere thank you for being an integral part of the Balatro community. We look forward to reconnecting with you in 2024!


Stay Connected

After lots of work and great feedback from the Balatro community - I have added a bunch of new QOL features and updated some things that should hopefully make the demo feel like a more seamless experience!

The main update is a new deck peek feature - where you have 2 ways to look at your pool of undrawn cards during the round. You also now interact with your deck by clicking it instead of going to 'Run Info'.

There is also an improved tooltip system that should give better vital context throughout the game.

Check out all changes and fixes below!

Changes:
-General performance improvements
-Can now sell cards in more situations
-Changed negative effect to be slightly hue shifted
-New run screen in main menu defaults to 'Continue' when applicable
-reworded Death to be more clear
-Bosses that debuff your entire hand and throw it away warn you when they are about to do so
-Brand new tooltip system, more information is now displayed for cards
-Renamed high scores to stats
-New top 10 stats screen for each most used Joker/Consumable/Voucher
-You now get a sticker for beating the demo with the base Stake difficulty for each Joker in the collection
-Seeded runs can no longer discover items in your collection
-Seeded runs no longer count toward your stats
-Seeded runs no longer allow you to unlock items in your collection
-View Deck button only shows on hover
-Changed Blackboard to count debuffed spades/clubs but NOT debuffed wildcards
-Changed wording on Dusk to say 'Retrigger'
-Changed To Do list to always randomly select a different poker hand
-Changed the Deck Peek to have larger labels/shade coded columns for Aces/Faces/Numbers
-Updated wording on Smeared Joker to be more explicit
-Base straight chip/mult buff
-Base Flush chip/mult buff
-Buff for Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter

Bugfixes:
-Fixed a bug where collection alerts were staying on screen after closing the collection menu
-Fixed a bug where viewing poker hands was creating garbage in engine
-Fixed a bug where using consumables when round ends crashes game
-Fixed a bug where non-integer numbers were being shown for display resolution
NOTE - SDL scaling doesn't play nice with Windows, so if you have windows scaling set to anything other than 100% your 'fullscreen' resolution numbers might look wonky. Make Balatro run in high DPI mode to fix this, but otherwise there isn't an issue with the numbers being off
-Fixed a bug where To Do list had hand reroll on reload
-Fixed a bug where some buttons could be clicked multiple times (Cash out, sell, use, open, etc.)
-Fixed a bug where packs were respawning on load after rerolling in the shop
-Fixed a bug where cards were not correctly being pseudorandomly selected by things like Wheel of Fortune, Aura, Talisman, etc.
-Fixed a bug where double clicking 'play' on the psychic caused wacky things
-Fixed a bug where glass cards with gold seals get redrawn to hand as nothing
-Fixed a bug where empty decks could not be clicked
-Fixed a bug where DNA created cards with a red back instead of the deck colour

Hi everyone,

We'd like to extend our heartfelt thanks for your incredible support since the launch of demo in late September. It's an exciting time for us as we've reached a significant milestone - over 45,000 downloads and a notable achievement as the No. 1 played demo on Steam for a period!



We are deeply grateful for your enthusiasm and feedback, which have played a pivotal role in shaping our project. In recognition of your support, we've decided to extend the demo's availability for a bit longer.

If you haven't had the chance to experience it yet, there's still time to download and join in the excitement. Your input is essential for refining the game, so please continue to share your thoughts and suggestions.




[h3]Stay Connected[/h3]

Hey everyone,

Great news – the long awaited demo is now LIVE!

You can get your hands on it by visiting the Steam page for Balatro:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

Balatro is a groundbreaking roguelike deckbuilder, offering you a highly familiar and intuitive gameplay experience built on poker hands, and then twists that formula with game-changing joker cards that can transform the rules of the classic game.

This demo is compact and focused. We want it to be enjoyable without spoiling the full game. The most important part of this demo is that it helps us understand how to improve the full game, so please give it a spin and let us know what you think.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Lastly, we've put together a quick survey and your input will be a big help in fine-tuning the game 🙏🙏: https://forms.gle/pVU7quFD2HTn2G8m8


Thanks a million for your support!



[h3]Stay Connected[/h3]

Hey all,

I have some big Balatro news to share today, but before I do that I wanted to say how unbelievable the love and support I’ve received in recent weeks has been - the groundswell of community passion for this game completely caught me off guard and has been both inspiring and terrifying. There is a huge amount of work up ahead so I’d like to explain how Balatro will evolve in the upcoming months.

To make sure that Balatro reaches its full potential, I have enlisted the publisher Playstack to help support it. Playstack has supported some amazing games such as AK-xolotl, The Case of the Golden Idol, The Last Faith and Mortal Shell, so I’m really excited for their help. Having Playstack take care of some of the day-to-day stuff will allow me to refocus on developing Balatro, and their expertise will help me better navigate through many of the new challenges I have been facing. Their help will also afford me to do things I wouldn't be able to do alone, such as potentially releasing on other platforms and high quality localization support.

This does mean there will be some quick changes that I want everyone to be aware of and, with you as my earliest supporters, I want to be transparent:


[h2]Balatro Playtest is closing [/h2]

If you’re queueing for the Playtest, I know you will undoubtedly be disappointed that we are closing the Playtest plan.

The truth is that the queue for the Playtest has outgrown its intended size by many orders of magnitude. As the line of people patiently waiting grew rapidly, the Playtest suddenly no longer fit its intended purpose which was to allow a few people to play the game and give me feedback.

However…

[h2]New demo: Coming September[/h2]

In September I will be launching a new Balatro demo that will be accessible for everyone.

This demo will be more compact and focused, offering a smaller slice of the full Balatro experience (This demo will not be capped at 50 rounds). The September demo will NOT be an official entry of the October NextFest, however it will be available to download and play during the same time as the festival runs.

You can get notified of the new demo going live, and stay notified on all future demos and releases, by joining our exclusive newsletter here: www.PlayBalatro.com



[h2]The NextFest demo: Coming February[/h2]

Balatro will be releasing early next year, and in February I’ll launch the official NextFest demo.

Details on this demo are still coming together, but my intention is to expand on the September demo with more Jokers, new ideas, and different scenarios.

Like with the September demo, you can sign up to the Newsletter on www.PlayBalatro.com to stay in the loop.



Thank you again for your support, and I can’t wait to share the next demo in September!

- LocalThunk