Balatro developer LocalThunk has marked the second anniversary of his hit indie roguelike with a heartfelt blog post that ended: “Yes, I’m still working on 1.1.”

Balatro was set to receive a 1.1 update last year, but its solo developer, LocalThunk, pushed it back in order to preserve his “hobbyist” approach to game development. Since release, he has been crunching alone on a balance patch and releasing a mobile port, before taking some time out and then beginning 1.1 work.

Now, in a blog post entitled Bad Grades, LocalThunk talks about dropping out of his engineering degree – “the idea of spending the rest of my life doing something I didn’t care about was enough for me to throw in the towel” – and talked about approaching his academic advisor for help switching to a computer science degree instead (luckily for us).

“The choice was simple. It was hardly a choice at all, really. I loved programming. I wasn’t any good at it, nor was I aware of what may await me after graduation, but in the months since that Intro to Computer Science course I had created a few programs that convinced me this is the thing for me. I want to make things with code,” he wrote.

“The transition into Computer Science was a bit rough, seeing as I’d already missed a couple of weeks of the semester with a full course load. I was not a good student, and to be honest I barely passed some of my required courses.”

But this new skill enabled him to make things – a “perlin noise terrain generator”, a grid-based heat dissipation simulation” – and a “more granular version of Risk, or a bite-sized version of a grand strategy game like Europa Universalis”.

“I worked on that game for over two years. It never had a name, it was never completed, and apart from showing it to a few friends and family, nobody knew it even existed,” he added. “But it was exactly what I wanted to make, and the feeling of absolute freedom I had while working on it is the reason why I kept game development as a hobby years later. That project was the template. I found the files for that project and played it for a couple [of] days recently; it was pretty fun.”

LocalThunk said he “thinks about that version of myself a lot now”, adding, “Even if I could warn myself, I’m not sure what I could have said to prepare for the insanity” of releasing Balatro.

“With all the success, baggage, attention, heartache, fear, stress, and joy that I’ve had since Balatro was created, at least that old version of myself is still there,” he concluded. “Last night I stayed up until the early hours of the morning drawing pixel art, writing code, and listening to music in my quiet house. Notebook of ideas open next to me, cup of decaf in hand.”

Then, right at the end as a postscript, he added: “Yes, I’m still working on 1.1.”

After a shaky start with ratings boards, Balatro has gone on to find phenomenal success. LocalThunk has 100 percent completed his own game, which has “equipped” him to better design the next update.