Indeed, there are numerous benefits to maintaining anonymity in our increasingly transparent, digital landscape. Staying under the radar provides you the liberty to live more quietly, or, if you’re the pseudonymous Balatro creator LocalThunk, it allows you the chance to blend seamlessly into your own demo booth at GDC like a mouse in a pizzeria.
“One of my favorite moments from GDC,” LocalThunk shares in a series of posts on Bluesky. “They had a booth set up to demo Balatro as it was nominated for an award. I watched for a while and then decided to give it a try myself.”
“I smashed a white stake challenge,” LocalThunk continues, referring to the punishing “white stake” aspect of the poker roguelike. Although it is Balatro’s lowest-score challenge, the white stakes can genuinely drive some players to a point where their hardships have become quite the source of amusement for dedicated Balatro enthusiasts.
So LocalThunk walked away from his successful GDC demo run with the demeanor of someone who just triggered a missile crisis, I would assume, leading an observer to remark as he was about to leave,” LocalThunk recounts on BlueSky.
“‘Wow, you must have played this before!'” he recalls them exclaiming.
“‘I guess you could say that,'” he responded modestly.
“Also, this was truly the first and only occasion I’ve seen strangers engage with my game in-person,” LocalThunk elaborates. “I still have yet to encounter Balatro out in the open. So, as far as I’m concerned, you all are just casting me in a Truman Show situation.” Whenever you ask me about Balatro’s remarkable success since its launch in 2024, it feels more like a Batman narrative. Look, right here is 200 Jokers.