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Belatro's Fundamental Design Flaw
Balatro came out in 2024, and by 2025, it had won The Game Awards’ Best Independent Game, Game of the Year at the Developers Choice Awards, and multiple BAFTA Games Awards.
It gained a lot of recognition seemingly overnight, so imagine our shock when LocalThunk, the creator of the game, admitted to having left a fundamental design flaw in the game.
How did it manage to become such a hit then?
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”
This phrase popularized by Civilization’s designer Soren Johnson became one of the most important principles in game design. And it’s very applicable for one of 2024’s best games which is built around what its own creator calls a ‘fundamental design flaw.’
Balatro is a poker roguelike where every run is about building absurd scoring combinations by buying and re-arranging cards on your deck that will get you the highest points.
Although scoring is the main goal, the game deliberately doesn’t tell you whether your current hand will beat the blind before you commit to playing it.
This was obviously on purpose, with Localthunk expressing that the whole charm of the game was in those moments where you had to cross your fingers and hope you made the right move.
However, if players really wanted to, they can still calculate the possible outcomes because it shows the value of each card. So technically if you leave a calculator open you would be able to know if your hand will win the round.
This goes completely against what the creator of the game wanted, but some players prefer it that way. So should he fix it?
Well, at the moment, he says he won’t, because it compromises his original vision, but instead, he accepted this, adding some features that made it somewhat easier but still designed the rest of Balatro so that playing intuitively is still incredibly rewarding.
Despite this, Balatro won best independent game in 2024 and amassed more than 2 million sales. Showing that not every flaw should be fixed, and good design is knowing which ones are worth keeping.
