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The slot machine being completely reflex-based was tried before and not popular at all. People were getting tired of trying to constantly time it, and it became a game where you're constantly in Quick Time Event mode, and the payoff between timing it right or not was so huge that you couldn't just give up on it. Making it fully automated would make the game a complete auto battler, with no player agency in battle. The current system is the best middle ground I could find, where you can time the first reel to nudge the odds in your favour, but the quality of the follow-up spins are random, lifting the pressure from the player significantly. Players who want an autobattler already have the choice to just mash the button immediately

Randomized starting loadouts will be an unlockable feature, and yeah, they probably need some refinement

Stacking one color is indeed one of the best ways to go, however there are enemies in the game designed to counter a specific color so I usually like to go 2-3 colors. Going for more than 4-5 colors will end up quite inconsistent unless all symbols are 2+ colored

I considered making money equivalent to health, so that you're trying not to go "broke" instead of having generic health, but I think that would take away too many health-based interactions.

Unlocks are completely arbitrary with no thematic reason. Kinda imitates Binding of Isaac in that way, where things just show up because stuff happened. Not the best in terms of integrating the theme, but I think it's an acceptable standard in the genre

(1 edit)

>The current system is the best middle ground I could find

Yeah, I agree it’s good. Just didn’t understand how it works at the start. My only experience with One Armed Bandits is from Pokémon 1st gen.

edit: To be clear, the way I thought the reels worked was that you have a short 1-2 second window to stop all of them manually, one by one. I did not understand that the 2nd and 3rd are completely uncontrollable after hitting the button once. So I was even more stressed out than people that played the old version, because I thought I should find the perfect timing for reel 2 and 3 within the 2 second window after stopping reel 1.

Played some more, this time recorded https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026572022 & https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2026584363

  • I am getting stutters in the game, it feels like each time I start it, gets worse. You can maybe feel it in the stream recording. Stopped OBS once to see if that was causing it, but lags remained.
  • Idk, playing more, I really don't know about these random reels. I feel the strategy comes down to "stack 1-2 colours, and know which 1-2 types of enemies you can beat with that." The other enemies are in some cases not only "hard" but statistically nigh impossible. There is a bunch of enemies that grind you down badly if you do not find an ultrafast K.O.
  • Timing each reel individually, there would be some point in playing a "jack of all trades" all-colour build, if you are very good at timing, because it would have the benefit of being able to farm all enemies. But as things are right now, if you have too many colours, you simply will never hit anything.
  • Expanding on this, I feel the enemies that manipulate your slot machine are really stupid (now?) because quite soon you are just unable to hit anything. You go from an OK machine to regular 3-4 turns of nothing in a row.
  • Maybe the fix to individual reel-stopping being to stressful is just making reels (much?) slower? After all, there is also a strategic angle in deciding, given 3 randomized reels, which 9x9 you want to hit. If you are stacking all red, you don't care, but if you have more mixed colours, you can actually try to hit blue vs. machinegunners, and red vs. tourists, and yellow when you need money, and so on.

Just some more thoughts, idk, take it or leave it, might play more and change my mind more. Need to get a purple build running at least one time....