The Balatro party is getting bigger: Two months after surprising everyone by adding Geralt and Dave the Diver to the game in the Friends of Jimbo "collaboration pack," LocalThunk and Playstack have rolled out a new one with card art from Cyberpunk 2077, Slay the Spire, The Binding of Isaac, and Stardew Valley.
The Friends of Jimbo 2 collab pack is out now and, as with the first, it's free for all players. The new card art (which has no impact on gameplay) features a number of characters you might be familiar with. If you've ever thought to yourself, "Boy, I really wish I could play Balatro with Johnny Silverhand and Jackie (or at least have their faces plastered on my cards)," this is for you.
I focus on them because I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077 right now (well, not right now, right now I'm working) but they're far from the only notable new backs. Isaac is here too along with some vaguely disturbing Joker card art, as are Ironclad, Silent, and Defect from Slay the Spire, and Stardew Valley villagers Pierre, Lewis, and Marnie.
"After we launched the first collaboration pack this summer, we knew we wanted to invite even more friends to join the party," Playstack PR manager Wout van Halderen said. "Working with these talented developers and studios has been such a rewarding experience, and seeing their creations in Balatro has been a real highlight for both Playstack and LocalThunk."
LocalThunk, the solo developer of Balatro, revealed on X that the Stardew Valley card art was made by Stardew creator Eric Barone himself. "Thanks for the great game LocalThunk, I'm honored that Stardew is included," Barone wrote in response. " I have to 100% the game now."
It's a genuinely remarkable mix of characters, drawn from big-studio, big-budget games and huge indie hits alike, and the fact that all these games are lining up to be friends with Jimbo reflects just how much of a phenomenon Balatro really is. People just love this game: In August, CD Projekt global PR director Radek Grabowski said the studio decided to collaborate with LocalThunk on Witcher 3 card backs because people there dig it so much, and in hindsight—especially since Playstack said the original Friends of Jimbo pack was the first in a planned series—I suppose we could've foreseen that Cyberpunk 2077 would follow suit.
The new Balatro card skins can be unlocked via the game's new Customize Deck settings menu. As for whether more Friends of Jimbo packs will follow, that's at the very least a possibility: van Halderen told PC Gamer, "We have some more surprises on the horizon and as long as there is a taste for these collaborations, we are open to doing them with cool partners."
