Marking two years since the debut of Balatro, creator LocalThunk shared a reflective post titled “Bad Grades.” In it, the developer revisits their university years—dropping out of an engineering program in the final year, struggling with poor computer science marks, and spending late nights on the hobbyist projects that eventually formed the backbone of Balatro.
Concluding the message, the developer reached out to the community with a status update:
This represents the first official progress report since September 2025, when LocalThunk revealed that the next major release was being pushed to 2026 to recover from the exhaustion following the mobile version’s launch.
The developer emphasized a preference for steady, consistent progress over intensive “crunch” periods. To ensure meticulous gameplay balance, LocalThunk personally achieved a 100% completion rate on the game’s maximum difficulty, using that experience as a benchmark for designing new content. There is currently no firm date for version 1.1; it will arrive “when it is ready.”
Source: iXBT.games