By any measure, Balatro is a phenomenon. A weird little indie card game that came out of nowhere in 2023, it earned rave reviews when it launched in early 2024, claimed our Game of the Year crown, and has some of the biggest developers and publishers in the world lining up to get in on the action.
Today, a little over a year after its release, developer LocalThunk has shared the official "Balatro Timeline," a detailed and surprisingly dramatic rundown of how it all came to be (including, in case you were curious, the origins of his name) that's also just a straight ton of fun to read.
