Cyberpunk 2077's Brilliant Indie Crossover Started With A Playful Meme
Jimbo pays a visit to Night City.
It’s been a big week for Balatro. Not only did the solo-developed poker-based roguelike win Apple’s 2024 Game of the Year, adding another prestigious award to its stack. The game now has its own quest line featured in one of the best role-playing games of the decade.
Cyberpunk 2077’s surprise update, which adds a new photo mode, vehicles, and customization options, also includes a new scavenger hunt starring Balatro’s trolling mascot Jimbo. First discovered by social media user @SynthPotato, the quest involves our protagonist V tracking down a series of Jokers across the game world. Each of these cards are actual run-altering Jokers that Balatro players will instantly recognize.
“Some time ago, I asked the Quest Design team at CDPR: ‘You liked the Cyberpunk cards in Balatro? What if we had Balatro cards in Cyberpunk 2077?’” Radek Grabowski CD Projekt Red’s Global PR Director tweeted Wednesday. “Thanks to the talented Quest Designer Maria Mazur, we now have the Balatro quest in Update 2.2.”
Wout van Halderen, PR manager for Balatro publisher PlayStack, says the collaboration first started with the Friends Of Jimbo update released earlier this year.
“I photoshopped a Jimbo card in a Gwent Deck, reached out to Grabowski at CDPR, and said ‘hey, you wanna do something cool?” van Halderen tells Inverse.
While most of the games that appear in the Friends Of Jimbo cosmetic update are smaller titles and indies like Among Us, Dave The Diver, Vampire Survivors and Stardew Valley, both Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 are there. LocalThunk and PlayStack figured that was the end of their communication with a developer as high profile as CD Projekt Red. To their surprise, the Poland-based studio wanted more.
Balatro is one of the year biggest and best surprises.
“All of a sudden they were like ‘Can we put something Balatro-related in our game?” van Halderen said. “We were like ‘are you sure?’ Like what is happening right now?”
“At first we thought they would do a Jimbo poster,” he continued. “They came back with an entire quest line asking ‘Hey can we do this?’ We said yeah of course and were happy to give them the art they needed. We really liked working with those guys”
Completing the scavenger hunt for Jimbo earns players a complete set of face cards as a trophy in V’s apartment. The cards are identical to the Friends of Jimbo cards, which replace the default Jack of Spades with Jackie Welles, Queen of Spades with Rogue Amendiares, and King and Spades with Johnny Silverhand. The surprise collaboration brings the two developers’ admiration for one another full circle.
Players that complete the new quest get a trio of Cyberpunk 2077-themed Balatro face cards in V’s apartment.
Since Balatro’s release in February, the game has become an overnight success. It sold 3.5 million copies and racked up awards from Pocket Gamer, Polygon, and the Golden Joysticks. The game was also recently nominated for five BAFTAs including Best Debut Game, Design and Music, and five awards at Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards including the coveted Game of the Year.
Balatro isn’t the only crossover CD Projekt Red considered for its futuristic RPG. Earlier this week, some of gaming’s most prolific modders found evidence of plans for The Witcher 3’s Geralt to visit the hedonistic sprawl of Night City for a fun cameo. The developer even planned to reference the cameo in a Cyberpunk 2077 quest. They ultimately decided to cut the crossover from the final version of The Witcher 3. Maybe go fish is more Geralt’s speed.
