Over the last year, Balatro has found a pretty huge fan base, with players finding a lot to love across the game’s various platforms. While Balatro is nothing short of a huge success story, there’s one question that remains on the minds of many fans: just how the heck are you supposed to pronounce the game’s name? Game File‘s Stephen Totilo had the opportunity to ask the game’s publisher at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Naman Budhwar is Playstack’s head of video marketing, and he was able to offer an official answer: BAH-luh-trow.
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“BAH-luh-trow is how LocalThunk says it, but it’s kind of a ‘gif’ ‘jif’ situation where he doesn’t really mind how people say it,” said Budhwar.
As far as developers are concerned, LocalThunk tends to be a pretty private person. Despite the game’s massive success over the last year, the developer remains largely quiet, and has mostly avoided any big interviews, instead communicating with fans through the game’s website and social media accounts. Unless he comes out and offers some further elaboration, fans can assume this pronunciation from Playstack is the most official one. At the end of the day though, it doesn’t matter too much, and if you prefer to say it a different way, LocalThunk seems to be cool with other pronunciations.
Pronunciations have often caused headaches for a lot of gamers. The reality is, there are a lot of names that go unspoken in games, from the title itself, to the names of individual characters. This isn’t really surprising when it comes to indie games, but the problem has also had an impact on major franchises, and even some adaptations; infamously, the 1994 Street Fighter movie saw the character Ryu’s name pronounced incorrectly. Some pronunciations have also evolved over time, like the Pokemon Arceus, which has a different official pronunciation now than it did several years ago. The key difference here is that Balatro isn’t a made up word; the name comes from a real Latin word used for a jester. Given that, it’s safe to assume LocalThunk won’t be making any official adjustments in the future.
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Whatever you call it, Balatro has basically taken over the world since launching in early 2024. In a year that saw many critically-acclaimed games released, Balatro won a number of major awards, including overall Game of the Year at The Game Developer Choice Awards earlier this month. The game also recently made its debut on Xbox Game Pass, which should convince a lot of players to try it that might not have otherwise. That’s bound to lead to a lot more people looking to figure out how to pronounce it, but at least we now have an answer!
Have you been pronouncing Balatro correctly this whole time? Or did you have a different way of saying it? Share your thoughts with me directly on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!
