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Before Balatro took over the world, the roguelike's creator considered naming it Fool's Gambit - 'obviously not a great name,' but it had a killer main menu
Balatro, a successful poker-inspired roguelike deck builder, almost had a different name and a wacky interactive menu where players could rearrange letters to spell "random crap." Despite its initial low expectations, Balatro has become a hit, garnering awards nominations and even a collaboration with Stardew Valley.
Prior to Balatro marking its place among some of the best roguelikes around, solo developer LocalThunk considered calling the game something else - and giving it an interactive menu in which players could rearrange the title's letters to spell "random crap."
Balatro is a clever name for a poker-inspired deck builder with unique Joker cards - after all, it translates directly to "clown" or "jester" in Latin. In ancient Rome, a balatro was essentially a professional buffoon paid to jest. Balatro wasn't, however, always the title that LocalThunk had in mind for the smash-hit roguelike game - in fact, it actually turns out that one of the original "candidate titles" for Balatro was Fool's Gambit.
Speaking in a recent post with a clip featuring Balatro's old main menu, LocalThunk reveals as much. "One of the candidate titles/main menu designs before I chose 'Balatro,'" the dev writes. "Fool's Gambit was obviously not a great name but dragging the letters around to spell random crap was incredibly satisfying." It looks incredibly satisfying indeed - a throwback to the fun, interactive menus many games used to include.
One of the candidate titles/main menu designs before I chose “Balatro”Fool’s Gambit was obviously not a great name but dragging the letters around to spell random crap was incredibly satisfying pic.twitter.com/083oMQBetDOctober 24, 2024
I'm honestly obsessed with the old menu, especially after considering how LocalThunk never knew how big Balatro would become while cooking up the final product. As the dev admits in a follow-up post to the clip of what was once Fool's Gambit, "I was expecting like 4 of my friends and my parents to buy the game and that would have been awesome." According to LocalThunk, "the entire past year has been a series of crazy events."
The deck builder has indeed seen a mind-boggling height of success - and it's not stopping anytime soon, either. LocalThunk just celebrated humanity losing 11,000 years of time to the roguelike across all platforms, right after the game was nominated for three different awards at the Golden Joysticks. Who knows, perhaps if the creator had gone with Fool's Gambit over Balatro, the world might have somehow missed out on one of 2024's greatest gems.