Joining pregnancy tests and potato-powered calculators, smash hit roguelike Balatro is the latest thing that can run Doom

Calculators can run Doom. Pregnancy tests can run doom. Rat neutrons grown in a lab can run Doom. Dominos Apps can allegedly run Doom. And now, brain-frying roguelike Balatro has joined the eternally growing list of random things that can also run the seminal shooter.

Perfectly named Redditor UwUDev originally posted their prototype to the game’s main subreddit, which eventually caught the eye and approval of Balatro creator LocalThunk, showing several poker cards turned into portions of a video game screen displaying the iconic Doom. Who knew old-school demons were hiding in the crevices of a moreish comedy game? 

Literally nobody asked for it, but here it is, Doom on balatro from r/balatro

UwUDev made the prototype without thinking that “anyone would care” – little did they know, there are entire corners of the internet entirely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what can and can’t run Doom – “but since the community seems to like it, I’m planning something even more impressive and stupid,” they teased.

The prototyper also mentions that Balatro’s Doom is “super laggy” at the moment, and sometimes “really unplayable.” So maybe Balatro can’t run Doom after all? Does it need to hit a frames per second threshold before qualifying? If Balatro’s Doom isn’t publicly available or replicable, does it still count? I think it does. I’ve seen some Doom in my day, and that right there is some Doom. A real ’tree falls in a lonely forest’ type of situation. Let’s not concern ourselves with that, though. Let’s just enjoy the glorious sight of Doom running, once again, on something it was never supposed to, and hope that LocalThunk eventually patches in joker variants that slowly but surely engulf the screen in chunks of Doom.

The best surefire way to make Balatro more harmful to global productivity is to add a classic shooter to its deck of cards, but its developer is also trying his hand with upcoming banana lore that will “bloat this game,” as well as a mobile port. While we wait for both, check out a list of scrapped Balatro names that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

From Twitter to 100 pounds of moldy potatoes, here are 15 things that prove Doom can run on anything.