“A few weeks of vacation to lose” He thought he was starting a fun little project, but his game has captivated everyone: he just won two prestigious awards!

Gaming News “A few weeks of vacation to lose” He thought he was starting a fun little project, but his game has captivated everyone: he just won two prestigious awards!

The big winners of the Golden Joystick Awards 2024

The ceremony of Golden Joystick Awards 2024 took place a few days ago and the most popular games were awarded prizes in around twenty categories. Some have won awards for the quality of audio design or soundtrack, e.g AstroBot et Final Fantasy VII Rebirthothers were praised for their visual design, such as: Black Myth: Wukongand some in particular got their hands on several statuettes Helldivers II for the quality of the multiplayer, the trailers and finally for the Game of the Year award on consoles.

As independent games go, it's excellent Another crab's treasure which won the award for Best Self-Published Indie Game. Very good news for this Souls-like Under the Ocean, but nothing surprising given its quality. What is surprising, or at least for its creator, is the winner of the Best Independent Game (i.e. not self-published) and the Discovery Prize, which is none other than Balatrothe card game developed by LocalThunk and published by Playstack.

The creator is most surprised

It was in a message on Twitter (or LocalThunk talked about the Golden Joystick Awardswhich shows the surprise his victory caused. In fact, LocalThunk began to develop Balatro 3 years ago, with the sole goal of making a nice little game to share with friends. The developer thought that this project would only take up the few weeks of vacation he had given himself, but that is not the case: 2 years later LocalThunk left his job to devote himself fully to development Balatro.

Almost exactly three years ago, I started developing a strange card game on my laptop because I had a few weeks of vacation left and thought it would be a fun little project for me and my friends.

I don't know how to describe how absurd this all seems!

In April 2024, about a year after he left the job, LocalThunk could share Balatro with the whole world, and the rather special card game has had great success, be it on steam or on consoles. The popularity was so great that a few months after its release it was ported to mobile devices and reached 1st place in the ranking of the most popular games of the day in the App Store. And that's it Golden Joystick Awards 2024 What Balatro was crowned the best independent game against very popular titles such as Animal welfare, Lorelei and the laser eyesor even The brave little page. A great success for LocalThunk !