Do Great Games Actually Sell Themselves? The Balatro Story

Inside the viral marketing journey of a breakout indie hit

"A great game will sell itself." We've all heard it, but does this really happen? Balatro, the breakout indie title from solo developer Localthunk, provides a compelling scenario to explore whether quality alone can guarantee a game's success.

I implore you to read The Balatro Timeline. It’s filled with powerful lessons and offers an incredibly human perspective on the realities faced by solo developers, including the often underestimated stress that accompanies sudden success.

With only 43 wishlists at its initial Steam launch, Balatro’s eventual popularity raises a critical question: Was it simply the game's excellence that led to its success, or did strategic publisher support ultimately ignite its momentum? Let's explore.

Wishlist Numbers taken directly from The Balatro Timeline

Balatro Steam Page Launch

So what happened when Balatro, now a widely acclaimed indie sensation, first launched their Steam page in May 2023? Absolutely nothing. By the end of May, Balatro had 43 wishlists to it’s name.

“I had posted a few things on Reddit and Twitter but really nothing that ever gained meaningful traction”

Besides a handful of social media posts, the dev behind Balatro hadn’t really done anything to market the game. He released his Steam page with a demo and planned on releasing the game just a few weeks later in June 2023. His expectations were low and he had his own reasons for launching the game and moving on, but if you’ve read my Indie Survival Guide To Game Marketing then you’d know he barely gave the game a chance marketing wise. No reaching out to content creators or press, no active social media, no joining festivals, no use of his demo launch as a marketing beat, zilch.

A quiet Steam page launch with minimal activity isn't necessarily a verdict on your game's market appeal. Without proper marketing efforts, it’s impossible to gauge genuine market interest.

The Power of Content Creators

Now to completely contradict myself. Having a great game absolutely does give you cheat codes in marketing, it’s a down right superpower. Even though he did little marketing, Balatro was picked up by a handful of smaller content creators that boosted his wishlists to 183 by June 10th.

This lead to Dan Gheesling streaming Balatro and later recommending it to Northern Lion. Naturally this snowballed into even more content creators covering his game. Remember how I mentioned he had 183 wishlists on June 10th? By the end of June Balatro had 2440 wishlists. After Northern Lion played the next month, he ended July with 28,661 wishlists.

None of this would have happened without Balatro having a live demo! Make a demo folks. This is also a great reminder to reach out to and utilize smaller content creators. They are way more likely to cover your game for free and if enough of them do it, it can snowball and get the attention of larger content creators.

If your game starts going viral on social media or covered by lots of content creators you can expect publishers to come knocking on your door, and knock they did.

Publishers

Balatro at this point in time was every publishers wet dream. A great looking game with a highly rated demo, strong market validation, and a solo dev who doesn’t have time to learn or do proper marketing. I’ll take two please. This is often a great deal for the developer too. The notion of getting funding to develop your game and let the experts take care of marketing is an enticing one.

LocalThunk talked with various publishers but in the end he signed with Playtack in July 2023.

“I hire a lawyer to help me with all the contract negotiations, help me set up a business, and I decide to sign with Playstack after speaking to studios that have worked with them in the past. They can replace whatever salary I would have made from an IT job, so this is my job now!”

Playstack Marketing Strategies

What did Playstack do for Balatro? Well for starters they replaced his IT salary, created a go to market plan, localized the game, and ported Balatro to consoles and mobile.

“After a bunch of negotiations I finally sign a publishing deal with Playstack. I won’t go too far into whether or not people should or shouldn’t have a publisher, but for me at this time it was crucial that I have some publishing help. They outlined a very sensible release plan for the game (one that we adhered to almost exactly until launch in Feb 2024) and they really expanded the audience a ton with support for more languages and porting on day 1 for every major console.”

So what was in the go to market plan? Here’s a few mentioned by Localthunk in the blog post.

Ongoing Playtesting & Community Management

This was actually something Localthunk was great at from day 1. It’s certainly not a coincidence that he playtested frequently and ended up with such a highly rated game.

Here’s a few great quotes from Localthunk that provide some nice insights into playtesting

“I also showed the game to some friends during a discord call, and one friend made the suggestion that there should be a flaming effect on your score if you get a really good hand. I hated the idea at first, but I sat with it for a while and knew I was wrong. That flaming score effect really fit perfectly with the game I was trying to create. Sure glad I listened to him!”

“Feedback started coming in from the Beta players. This marks the beginning of a more player-focused development strategy I would adhere to instead of just listening to my gut all the time.”

“The last few months I have been very involved in the Balatro Discord server. I try and chat with players all the time, and I try to take their criticisms seriously. I feel like the demo and beta players knew more about how to play the game properly than I did, so I found it was really important to listen to what they had to say about the game in order to properly assess what I need to change or tweak for balance.”

“I had a private server made a little while earlier with testers from the Balatro community that I felt exhibited an exceptional ability to give feedback, understand the vision of the game, and analyze the flaws with it. I think this was instrumental in making sure that the 1.0 version of the game really started fun out the gate. I chatted with them a ton this month.”

I really like he’s idea to make a private server for exceptionally qualified testers. This is a fantastic way to create evangelists and get some highly effective feedback. At the risk of stating the obvious, actually listen to your players! Sometimes devs can get a bit of an ego and think they know what’s best for their game and largely dismiss player feedback. I’m not saying you should aim to make everyone happy or make changes willy nilly, but look for patterns in feedback and generally be openminded.

Balatro is without a doubt an exceptionally designed game. My general takeaway after reading the full blog post from Localthunk is that the community behind the game was instrumental in creating the final design.

An Updated Demo

After watching Norhernlion quickly finish the demo and rushing to send him a key to the full beta version, LocalThunk & Playstack realized they needed to update the demo.

“The plan now is to make the demo content limited instead of round limited. This means that players can play as much as they want, which is much more sensible.”

Steam Next Fest Fall 2023

While Balatro wasn’t in the Fall 2023 Next Fest, Playstack decided to launch the demo during it and see if it would get extra attention since it was happening in parallel with a festival focused on playing new demos.

“The demo should be ready a couple weeks before the Fall 2023 Next Fest in October. Next Fest is a festival set up by Steam to shine a spotlight on upcoming games for the platform. While we weren’t planning on adding Balatro as an official entry in the October 2023 Next Fest - we thought having a demo available at the same time as the festival might gather some incidental attention.”

“Next Fest goes live early in the month, and as anticipated we do catch a lot of attention for having a demo live at the same time. We get pretty good coverage in general around this time from YouTubers, streamers, and even some media.”

This strategy worked out for Balatro but it’s hard to say if this is because Balatro was already gaining significant traction or because launching the demo next to Next Fest was highly effective. On one hand I would assume that players who are looking forward to playing new demos due to Next Fest would find them through the Next Fest interface (where Balatro would not be), on the other hand players and press in general are in a mood of trying and highlighting new demos during Next Fest. Regardless it worked for them and I totally get the line of thinking.

Influencer Tournament

In January Playstack hosts a Balatro Tournament with 6 streamers. This was a beautifully executed strategy. It’s a far more engaging use of content creators then simply sponsoring their streams and timing it right before the the Feb 2024 Next Fest built up some great momentum. The streamers were given access to an early build of the new demo that would go live during Next Fest giving players an early look at what they’d be able to play soon.

“My partner and I order sushi, sit down and watch the multi-stream broadcast by MurphyObv playing a hilarious character. It was probably my favourite moment of the entire pre-launch phase of the game. Just really wonderful to see this silly game come together for a moment and watch a bunch of people participate like a community. Hafu wins, because of course she does. She’s Hafu!”

Steam Next Fest February 2024

Balatro took down the demo in December 2023 then prepared an updated version for the February 2024 Next Fest. Unless your launching your demo during Next Fest itself, it’s always a good idea to make Next Fest special and launch an updated demo.

“We have a really strong Next Fest. We get a ton of coverage from streamers, YouTubers, and media yet again. Balatro is one of the most played games of the festival.”

Balatro Launch Day

Shortly after the Influencer tournament in January, Balatro announces it’s release date: Feb 20th. On Feb 19th the embargo is lifted and major press outlets release their reviews of Balatro.

“The first big review is from PC Gamer: 91. Playstack and I are on a call when they break the news to me, and I can tell they are pretty shocked. I am shocked. That rating doesn’t make any sense. More ratings pour in, and by the time the day is done we are sitting above 90 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic. I wasn’t even thinking that this was a possibility, but it sure did build a ton of hype for launch day. I don’t think I would have rated Balatro higher than an 8 and I made the damn thing.”

Following the awesome reviews Balatro launches with 208,401 wishlists. By the end of it’s launch day, Balatro sold 119,000 units on Steam alone.

Mental Health

Behind Balatro's incredible success story lies an important conversation about the mental and physical toll of game development. As the game's popularity exploded, its developer found himself grappling with significant health issues, including severe anxiety, sleep disruption, and worrying heart symptoms.

“I call my doctor and see him the next morning for an appointment. He assures me that this wasn’t a heart attack or heart failure but an anxiety attack. I am not normally an anxious person and have never had issues with this in the past but I think the intense stress for such a long time has done quite a bit of damage. He asks me if my work has been stressful lately. I don’t even know how to explain.”

Localthunk’s transparent reflection on these challenges shines a much-needed spotlight on the importance of mental health within the game dev community. His honest insight serve as a crucial reminder for developers everywhere: prioritize self-care, seek support when struggling, and openly discussing these challenges with those around you. 💖

Conclusion

Balatro's success story reveals that while a great game is certainly a significant advantage, it requires strategic marketing and community engagement to truly thrive.

See you next time, i’m gonna go do a jokerless run of Balatro now.