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'Looks like we found out who the real joker is': Balatro dev reveals one Joker card has been hiding a revolutionary secret all along, because they 'thought it was pretty funny'
A seemingly unremarkable Joker card in the roguelike game Balatro has been revealed to be a hidden Easter egg, offering players a way to cheat by predicting the next card they draw.
Balatro fans are currently in shambles as it's been revealed that one of the less exciting Joker cards has been hiding a helpful Easter egg this whole time, that's only been spotted after one player went searching through the game's code.
The Joker in question is Misprint – a common card that, on the surface, simply provides a random multiplier between 0 and 23. However, it turns out that its purpose goes much further than that, and despite what its name would suggest, it's no mistake. As highlighted in a YouTube video by content creator BelenosBear, it turns out that the text that flickers on the card's description actually reveals the card you're going to draw next when you're playing a blind, helping you cheat.
Your next card can be worked out from the number and letter shown – with D corresponding to Diamond, H for Heart, S for Spade, and C for Club, and the numbers being exactly what you'd expect, and 11, 12, 13, and 14 matching up with Jack, Queen, King, and Ace, respectively. This was seemingly first discovered by Discord user TamerSoup625, who claims to have uncovered it in the game's source code, and BelenosBear demonstrates it perfectly by discarding cards and watching the predictions come true. What's more, it's proven that you can pull off the trick from your card collection, too.
Balatro's solo dev LocalThunk was quick to respond to this, initially teasing on Twitter last night: "Step 1. Put little Misprint secret in code. Step 2. Bury it under 18000 IF statements. Step 3. ?????. Step 4. PROFIT." Now though, they've actually explained themselves.
"So years ago I added Misprint as one of the first ~15 Jokers in the game. From day one it had this Easter egg, I did it as a joke for a friend and we thought it was pretty funny at the time," LocalThunk reveals. "Looks like we found out who the real joker is."
Just in case this revelation wasn't enough, BelenosBear also noticed that, yup, the Easter egg is even present in Balatro's demo, so it's been right under our noses all along. We'll just have to wait and see how genius players might use it to their advantage – it's no doubt things like this that make Balatro one of the best roguelike games for some.