Here Is What To Expect In Balatro 1.1 Update

One of the many things that Balatro players look forward to for 2025 is the first major gameplay update for the beloved poker roguelike, which was announced in August last year. Now officially titled 1.1 version, this update will bring new strategies and ideas to the poker roguelike and be free as a thank-you token to the supportive community.

Developer LocalThunk shed some light on the content of the upcoming update in a recent interview with Bloomberg. It was probably due to the small incident that made him add 30 more Jokers secretly to fill the discrepancy between the number of Jokers he said to the publisher, Playstack, and what the publisher shared with the public, this time, LocalThunk is slightly more careful about giving accurate information. 

Although no details were shared, he confirmed a few major changes, including adding new jokers, overhauling an existing Matador Joker, which caused some confusion as it doesn’t always work as expected, and adjustments to the Blue Stake, one difficult modifier that will reduce discard by one. 

By January 21, Balatro had sold a whopping 5 million copies, which means another 1.5 million copies were sold in the month since December 12. It won three awards at the 2024 The Game Awards, including the Best Independent Game of the year. 

Looking at the future, LocalThunk shares that he’d keep focusing on Balatro. “I don’t have any imminent game ideas I want to make. I have thought of other game ideas in the past, but every time my mind goes down that road, I immediately think, ‘You can’t do that right now, you’re in the middle of something else,’ which I think has served me very well.”