> The developer of Balatro made an award winning deck builder game by not being aware of existing deck builders.

He was aware of deck builders and was directly inspired by Luck be a Landlord, but he was not aware of just how massive the genre is.

Direct quote from the developer:

> The one largest influence on Balatro was Luck Be a Landlord. I watched Northernlion play for a few videos and loved the concept of a non-fanatsy themed score attach roguelike a ton, so I modified the card game I was working on at the time into a roguelike.

> I cut myself off from the genre at that point intentionally, I wanted to make my own mistakes and explore the design space naively just because that process is so fun. I hear the comparison to Slay the Spire a lot but the truth is that I hadn't played that game or seen footage of it when I designed Balatro, not until much later.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bdtmlg/comment/kup7...