Balatro creator can finally enjoy his own roguelike after beating every deck on every difficulty: "All this time playing has killed any negative emotions I had toward it"

Balatro Joker card.

Poker-themed roguelike hit Balatro conquered everyone's lunch breaks, train commutes and toilet trips for a reason. Its loop of ever-expanding high scores sent it all the way up best-sellers lists, with millions of people having bought the game made primarily by one person: LocalThunk. But despite how popular it's been with everyone else, the indie developer has only just fully beat his own game, more than a year after it first released.

"Beat every deck on every difficulty! I still want to 100% the game, I'm having a really great time and I think I know my game a lot better now," LocalThunk wrote in a social media post. To put that into perspective, there are 15 decks in the game and eight difficulty levels that add hair-pulling modifiers each time. He essentially claimed victory over 120 runs that got progressively harder, a feat I've not managed to do with one deck after about a dozen hours.