Last night's BAFTA Gaming Awards saw a range of gongs awarded to some of 2024's standout titles, with the big winners being Team Asobi's Astro Bot (best game) and The Chinese Room's Still Wakes the Deep with three awards. Coming in hot for best debut, however, was our boy Balatro: , if you didn't know.
Despite Balatro's massive success, creator LocalThunk and so the award was accepted by actor Ben Starr as Jimbo, the greasepainted joker who now seems to be the face of the game. And Jimbo delivered quite the speech to the great and good of the games industry.
"And I can say, having met him personally, LocalThunk is really rich now," continues Jimbo. "He has shoes made of gold and he thanks you for making him that way. [[link]] He says here at the bottom he wishes he could thank more people but, if he's being honest, it was just him who made it. Everyone else is a freeloader. Especially you Playstack.
"Oh, and play more independent games . They are the lifeblood of this industry. And they deserve your respect. Thank you very much."
Well played Jimbo, who even took care to pronounce the game's name in-line with .
LocalThunk has form for this kind of acceptance too, having used Balatro's many award nominations and wins . The man himself may well have shoes of gold after Balatro's enormous success, but he's also achieved poker zen after : "All this time playing has killed any negative emotions I had toward it."