Played the latest version. It was going to be a small review but then I played a bunch more times so it ended up being a full post:

The overall theme is great, has a lot of character. It's pretty clear what everthing does after you've played a bit, I wouldn't need a tutorial (though I'm sure some casuals would).

I can see some value in diversifying a build but also there's fun to be had making builds for each individual type or for particular items so that's good. The enemies that are themed about what they do have the best designs. The Leprechaun's mechanics are also pretty interesting, it seems there'd be a way to beat him with every type of build (I assume he'll be nerfed in the future since he adds too many chips-bribes way too fast, or else moved to a non-first-stage area)

As far as my experience goes, my first run I went to the boss and got bodied so I went for a green build on my second run (cactus, my love) and on the third I went for block items like ace of spades / retaliate. Both times I died to elite enemies because I engaged with my health too low. Most of my frustration then is from me making stupid decisions like fighting the "hit for really big damage, once" guy with a retaliate build (and I never rolled taunt). Even if I already know what the enemy does, if the enemy's description (before fight, hovering over them) showed one or two of their attacks/actions or just the first action they'll do in a fight it might jog my brain's autopilot to say "hey, don't fight that guy on low health". Fourth run, tried purple tiles but they almost never came up and certainly the 7s never matched, it's tricky since you don't start out with any purples.  Fifth run I did all attack and while it was very strong, I got too many poor rolls on the leprechaun early on and couldn't take him out fast enough, plus pachinko gave me Midas Touch which may be the single thing that made me lose.

What I find weird is I had a ton of excess health on the first run and so avocados seemed overpowered. On my 2nd/3rd/4th runs after that I always ended up really low, despite having more experience or better builds. I believe that problem is because the game is extremely inconsistent in how much health it gives you, sometimes you'll get very little and sometimes (like my first run) it'll shower you in it right from the start.

Pinball minigame feels pretty unfair and it's especially awkward that you can't see the whole thing and often it feels like the pinball just shoots straight into the middle with no chance to even hit the ball. Pachinko seems bugged, trying to get rid of the message drops the ball in the middle and you don't seem to have any control at all.

I certainly prefer having some small input over it being an autobattler. Feels like the first reel should be ~15% slower but the speed it's at now is good for if you slow down yourself and observe the pattern on the first reel. Maybe it is better at this speed after all, I can't decide.

Are you supposed to be able to get negative block from Midas touch even if you have no block? Pretty sure I saw "-5" on block.

Edit: Beat the leprechaun.

Bonus: It is very possible to beat leprechaun with purple tiles but you need to be lucky and get broken items (I guess any build works if you get broken items). 7s with rusted gear and good timing allows you to easily one-shot everything you come across, as long as you don't have too many items. In fact, all three 7s appear often enough even when you have a ton of yellow tokens from the leprechaun. I only lined it up once this fight but I had 3-4 chances, I just kept whiffing them due to bad skill. Without the rusted gear, I also had a run where I had 4x 7s and they never lined up, except once against a character that was about to die. It's weird that 7s are absolutely atrocious wastes of space but if you have even 1x 7s with the rusted gear it's kinda nuts. As for winning with other purple tokens... Yeah, all the others I've seen are too awkward to work.

I recorded playing games with commentary, and your game is one of them.

Here's the link to the whole DD50 folder:

https://mega.nz/folder/GclCXISL#gwE9S1kRTbe6amYLH2RiYA

I made some suggestions in the video, so I am not going to type it here. I hope the video is going to be useful to you.

Just tried playing again. For me... the balance feels wayyyyyyy better. It felt great in fact. I still had to scheme to find health, and the leperchaun still beat me. Which is fine, I wasn't expecting to beat him first try, especially since my reels were all clogged up with tourist photos. But I was able to do what I was expecting from the game, punch casino weirdos, play some mini games, check out the different reels, etc... The reels stopping only taking one press is great. Now I feel like I can time the first one to try and edge things towards what I want, without having that grinding tedious feeling of trying (and failing) to time the reels constantly. 

Good job.

Genius theme. I find this game hilarious and I'm not even sure exactly why, as all the funny stuff is happening in my head rather than the game itself. This combination of mechanics creates incredible opportunities for parody or commentary, even though these are not fully tapped into. There's plenty of room here to go over the top and exaggerate the randomness even more with gambling skinner box nonsense. 

Instead the focus is on the real moment-to-moment gameplay of timing slots with tight failure states, and that's not as interesting. The rolls get really repetitive and I think that might ironically be due to the fact there is not enough gambling. The variability between a god jackpot roll and a dud is just not there.

I played the game last DD too and my feelings haven't changed much since then. I like the new animations and I don't remember if items were a thing back then but I like the risk/reward of fighting mini-bosses to get them.

My biggest issue is still that the hardest battle is always the first one, you either die to a dice or snowball into godhood, with no in-between. 

The reason for this, I believe, is because the starting symbols have no synergy with each other whereas most of the ones you can unlock have 2 colors which makes rolls way more consistent, and in any game with lots of RNG, consistence is overpowered. 

You go from having to work on lining up 3 reds for pitiful damage to matching 7 or 8 with just a few dual color items. Synergy between items is really good and I like the color system because it's very intuitive, it only needs a bit more balance in my opinion. 

I think I last played this two demo days ago. I was really hoping the balance and difficulty would be more tuned, but I honestly think the game is still way too "hard". Hard isn't even the right word though, because it's not exactly a skill issue. I mean, there is only a limited amount of control you have in terms of getting the reels to do what you want. Punishing is a better term, the game is very punishing. Imagine playing Pokemon, and you head out. In the very first field you enter, a Pidgey swoops in and completely destroys you. That's not good at all, but that's basically what you have going on right now. There is just no reason for the game to be this punishing, in my honest opinion. And it's completely detracting from the great aesthetic, concepts, and structure you have designed here. 

The reason I won't call this difficult or hard, is that both of those sort of imply that the "meat" of the game is increasing your skills. When you play Dark Souls or something, the game is asking you to improve your mastery of your weapon, to understand the enemy attack patterns and timings, their positions, how to use your shield and your roll, etc... The core content of the game is in developing those skills. Would you really try and tell me that the core content of your game is getting better at stopping the slot machine on the right item? Fuck no. 

I think you're misunderstanding the type of experience the game is promising. When I load up this game and start playing, I'm looking forward to exploring, building up, trying the minigames, seeing the jokes, and just enjoying myself. Instead, the game is slapping me in the face with random punishments. One goober at the very start of the game is just knocking me down to 0. For what reason? I genuinely think that clinging to challenge/punishment is a sign of insecurity about the value of your game. All the good and fun ideas of your game really desperately need to be freed of their punishing prison so they can shine. 

I'm so sorry if this is harsh, but I really like this game. And it's such a simple change to fix these issues. I promise you, people are not going to come to this game to be harshly punished and shit on. Let the game be what it is. Please.

i might have been too critical, but don't think i don't like the game - i just thought about the game too much and was compelled to write it down. i could keep going but i should probably stop here

reels:

• i beat the leprechaun with a red-only build which seems to be the only way, since yellows only make it easier for him to beat you and he doesn't attack enough with repeated low damage attacks to justify using blues
  • leprechaun ruining your reels to the point where there's no chance of a comeback and you have to wait for him to kill you isn't fun
  • i don't like leprechaun using your reels against you because it means your build is limited to certain types that can beat him
• since more matching colors means a higher chance of a successful roll, you're incentivized to only pick one color. that color is red, because no other color wins against most enemies and the leprechaun
  • other colors that provide strong effects and then dissolve are useful, but you have to match them first, and in the mean time they're clogging up your reel
  • jacks will beat me easily if I don’t focus on reds, tourists will ruin my build since I can’t beat them fast enough
• the descriptions of what icons do is very clear, the only one I didn’t understand was one I got after beating the leprechaun that mentioned turn slots or something which didn’t come with a tooltip explaining what that meant

map:

• i don't like how the player's freedom in moving around the board means they're able to choose to not interact with anything
  • because of this, it’s unclear to a new player which enemies you should fight first
  • when i first played in DD49 i walked straight to the leprechaun since that was my objective
• icons are overpriced, the meta is to save all your money to buy items, but both are bad in that you’re paying for something before you know what it is
• IMO pachinko is too random, pinball is too hard, and both are too expensive and detract from the core of the game

slots:

• it is really unpleasant that you can’t play the slots with the mouse, i don’t understand the reasoning for that at all
• timing the reels is skill based and feels fine, though I think it needs juice that I mention below
  • in a way though, the game is like a constant QTE, so I don’t know if it would appeal to a wide audience
• it’s a shame that the reels don’t all pay out when you defeat the enemy
• if you’re emulating a slot machine:
  • i don’t think you should play a “you lost” jingle. Slot machines know that it’s a bad thing to remind players that they lost
  • i think you should use the increasingly high-pitched reel stopping sound more sparingly. I would suggest that you use it for each reel after the first that has a chain of icons that would pay out
  • it’s a design choice, but you might consider using paylines instead of just matching 3+ icons. The difference would be something like:
    xxx
    xox
    ooo
    would pay out for low-middle-low and low-low-low separately for a total of 6, instead of just 4

• the “you failed, so you get nothing” item on losing to an enemy that flees or losing at pinball is discouraging

bug:

• if you reset the game while the reel is spinning the sound continues to play

Damn this game has such a dope aesthetic but it's hard. How I do good? It feels random but I got my shit pushed in and died in my second battle.

As someone who is to this day convinced you can time the slot machines in Pokemon RBY, this game speaks to me. Most of the gameplay mechanics are easy to intuit, and the ones that aren't have a convenient tooltip within reach. The minigames also add a delightful bit of variety, and the art is endearing.

As for suggestions and criticisms: the early game can be a bit... tedious. Even with good timing the reels can still just screw you and early on it can feel like you're struggling to make progress in a fight at times. Also anything you can do to improve the visual clarity of the symbols on the reels would only be appreciated. After about an hour and a half of play I started to get a headache from squinting at the reels.

Total playtime: roughly 2 hours. The leprechaun remains unslain because of eye strain.