Before Balatro took over the world, the roguelike’s creator considered naming it Fool’s Gambit – “obviously not a great name,” but it had a killer main menu

Prior to Balatro marking its place among some of the best roguelikes around, solo developer LocalThunk considered calling the game something else – and giving it an interactive menu in which players could rearrange the title’s letters to spell “random crap.”

Balatro is a clever name for a poker-inspired deck builder with unique Joker cards – after all, it translates directly to “clown” or “jester” in Latin. In ancient Rome, a balatro was essentially a professional buffoon paid to jest. Balatro wasn’t, however, always the title that LocalThunk had in mind for the smash-hit roguelike game – in fact, it actually turns out that one of the original “candidate titles” for Balatro was Fool’s Gambit.