Balatro dev says solitaire exists "at the peak of game culture" and was debatably "the most important" inspiration for his poker roguelike

gamesradar.com:

Balatro solo dev LocalThunk has given a bit more insight into the inspirations behind his hit "poker roguelike," which he says, it could be argued, is "technically a solitaire game."

In the first post on LocalThunk's newly created blog, he explains that solitaire – specifically, its most common variant, Klondike – would be "right in the middle" of a Balatro vision board, had he actually made one. It's arguably "the most important" inspiration behind the game, the dev adds, noting that he wanted Balatro to "bring the old feeling of solitaire into a game with modern design bells and whistles, creating something new and yet familiar."

To LocalThunk, classic solitaire games "exist at the peak of game culture," since they're so widely accepted and have been played by pretty much everyone, to the point that "they have transcended gaming culture more than even the biggest IPs (like Tetris or Mario)." The fact that solitaire is "almost viewed as a positive pastime more than a game" was something that interested LocalThunk, and seemingly fed into the dev's overall vision of who he imagined playing his game.

"My fantasy was that I was playing this weird game many years later on a lazy Sunday afternoon; I play a couple of runs, enjoy my time for about an hour, then set it down and continue the rest of my day," he explains. "I wanted it to feel evergreen, comforting, and enjoyable in a very low-stakes way. I think that's one of the reasons why there isn't a player character, health, or classic 'enemies' in the game as well. I wanted this game to be as low stakes as a crossword or a sudoku puzzle while still exercising the problem-solving part of the brain. Essentially I wanted to play Balatro like people play solitaire."

Obviously, there is quite a difference between Balatro and your classic game of solitaire. As LocalThunk points out, his own title includes the likes of challenges and achievements, which were included in order to get players to "explore the design of the game"