Whereas The Recreation Awards nominations have closely favoured massive hitters like Metaphor: ReFantazio, Astro Bot, and Remaining Fantasy 7 Rebirth—the latter two of that are notably not on PC, boo—one indie sport is standing among the many greater gamers: Balatro.
LocalThunk’s unbelievable poker roguelite has secured 5 nominations: Finest sport course, greatest unbiased sport, greatest debut indie sport, greatest cell sport, and the coveted Recreation of the 12 months award. That is the identical variety of nominations as Black Fantasy: Wukong, and yet one more nomination than Shadow of the Erdtree obtained.
No matter how issues end up when The Recreation Awards air on December 12, it seems like a fairly big win. LocalThunk appears to suppose as a lot too, taking to Bluesky to say: “Loopy loopy day, so many messages of affection and assist from superb individuals I’ve had the pleasure to satisfy these previous couple years. In complete disbelief”.
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Balatro developer bestows the ‘very prestigious Golden Thunk award’ on Animal Effectively, says it is so good it makes him ‘really feel like an imposter’
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LocalThunk had made passion video games prior to now, however realized Balatro was one thing particular when a buddy revealed he had performed it for ’20, 30, or 40′ hours
He additionally penned a fairly darn heartfelt message within the Balatro subreddit—it is a humble put up, principally spotlighting the neighborhood and different video games brewing within the indie scene fairly than focusing too onerous on his personal success. “I wished to thank all of you fantastic individuals for giving my sport a shot and celebrating the unbelievable 5 Recreation Award nominations for Balatro with me,” LocalThunk wrote. “It has been a extremely surreal day.”
A message to the neighborhood from r/balatro
He continued: “One of many issues I’ve discovered this previous 12 months is how type and supportive the indie dev neighborhood is. Everyone knows how onerous this trade might be and assist one another the place we are able to, and I’ve met so many superb those who love what they do and the individuals they work with.”
LocalThunk mentioned he felt “uncomfortable treating the nominations and awards for Balatro as ‘my’ awards or nominations,” including: “I really feel like my sport simply occurs to be the present face of this stunning and passionate nook of the trade. I simply occur to be the fortunate one to be propped up.”
The put up wraps up with some suggestions for “just a few video games that did not get consideration” together with Animal Effectively, Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, Billionaire and Arco, earlier than ending with the road: “Go assist an indie!!”
It is actual good to see LocalThunk’s humility and want to make use of his platform to carry up different builders and their video games. In the end, I am simply jazzed to see Balatro getting its much-deserved flowers—the sport totally took over the lives of the PC Gamer group when it launched in February, and our Slack channel nonetheless will get the odd “massive quantity” screenshot or video dropped in there. In a 12 months that is been undeniably bizarre for video games—no all-dominating big-budget launch, a number of video games that ought to have been hits however finally fell into obscurity—I am glad to see a lot love being proven to such a neat creation.
