The poker roguelike Balatro from developer LocalThunk captivated gamers in early 2024 with its unusual take on the classic card game, but can it be used to play Doom? Can. True, with reservations.
Image source: id Software
As noted by the Rock Paper Shotgun portal, recently a user under the pseudonym UwUDev from the Reddit forum demonstrated a prototype of the classic id Software shooter inside Balatro.
The idea is to turn a set of jokers from Balatro into a screen on which Doom gameplay is broadcast. As a proof of concept, UwUDev showed 55 seconds of Doom gameplay inside Balatro.
According to UwUDev, Doom inside Balatro “slows down a lot and often stutters sharply, but it works.” Even in its current form, the initiative attracted the attention of LocalThunk, who noticed the project on its microblog.
UwUDev admitted that he took on the task of transferring Doom to Balatro for the sake of self-development, and did not hope for interest in his development from the outside. The enthusiast is currently planning to optimize the game’s performance in the game.
Image source: UwUDev (Reddit)
It’s worth noting that Balatro is not the first third-party game to launch Doom. Last spring, the cult shooter was ported to Minecraft, and a few weeks ago to Team Fortress 2 (within the VScript virtual machine).
In addition to gaming, enthusiasts also made the classic Doom run inside standard Windows applications – first Notepad (at 60 frames per second), and then Paint (one to two and a half minutes per frame).