Balatro gameplay update coming in 2025

Game surpasses two million sales

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2024 almost had too many surprise hits to count so far, but poker-themed roguelike deckbuilder Balatro is certainly one of the biggest – and it continues to grow: According to the developer, the game has officially surpassed the impressive milestone of two million sales.

To celebrate this, LocalThunk also announced that Balatro would get a free gameplay update in 2025.

“The first major gameplay update is coming to Balatro in 2025,” the developer stated. “This update will bring new ideas and strategies to the game and as a token of huge appreciation to the game’s brilliant and passionate community, the update will be completely free.”

What’s more: This is only one of three surprises the Balatro dev has prepared for the summer – two other pieces of “exciting news” are still waiting to be revealed.

Balatro hit the mark of 500,000 sales just ten days after being launched, generating earnings of $1 million USD in just eight hours – a well-deserved reward for the developer of the indie game.

In Balatro, players are tasked with achieving as high a score as possible with the cards on their hand by adding different jokers to their deck throughout the run, which provide various multipliers. It includes so-called Boss Blinds, which provide unique challenges to the player and act as boss encounters blocking access to the next level.

Developer LocalThunk was inspired by poker and Big Two, a Cantonese card game, and didn’t really play any other roguelike video games ahead of creating Balatro – the only exception being Slay the Spire, which the developer played to study its control scheme.