itch.io

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

That's a nasty bug with the joker, I must make it so the Automon doll doesn't trigger while there's a tutorial pop-up or settings/other overlays

I get a symbol from Invaders quite frequently, which I think is fine since you also get some money back. The other things dropped by the enemies are power-ups. You can get speed, faster fire rate or +1 health

I might need to add more things to the game that make multi-color builds viable, but I'm not quite sure how, without redesigning the color system entirely. Or I could just make monocolor builds more punishable 

Will fix the issues with DJ, Pickpocket and Syringe, thanks

Symbols connect by color. This isn't like regular slot machines so your confusion is understandable

Some symbols have 2 colors. There's only 5 colors, identifiable if you look at your reels (upper right corner button)

During battle, the lines between the matching symbols have the color that they all have in common

I have some idea as to why it froze, probably something to do with RNG again. Certainly not a hardware issue, this game could run on a calculator

Not sure about stuttering issues either, I would understand if it lagged while generating the map, but afterwards it should be doing nothing at all. No one else reported this so I don't know what can I do. Though one guy plays through Vine on Linux and had performance issues with Extra Tooltips enabled only, so maybe that's a clue

There was an issue with copycat's rng always selecting the same things. Fixed now I think

Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback again!

Yeah color balance is a bit off - I noticed after last DD that Red was just severely underrepresented as a color and probably went overboard, it's now too consistent. I will also remove Chieftain's ability to purge himself, I think his Shell is enough of a green counter

Map generation was further improved after this DD - if any two objects would require more than 20 moves to get from one to the other, a shorter path will be carved.

There will be a stat/run tracker eventually, where you can view past wins and failures. Someday

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Sponge being one-time use is very experimental, I'll let it be like that for a while, maybe I'll lower the price

I'll tune down Malfunction, I experienced some struggles against it as well

Might switch Pickpocket and Tourist around in chapter order, and nerf/buff them accordingly

I'll think about switching some enemies around between chapters if you're saying Red is too good in chapter 3. Maybe Spike belongs there

I'll look into the bugs with all the items mentioned

I don't think a three lane system would be of any help with understanding of the battle system. But I do need to add more tutorial text to highlight the importance of timing the button

Yeah, I usually don't bother recording gameplay footage for agdg, just a bit of a pain to do it.

Thanks for playing!

Damn, I had something to prevent this. Must not be working

There was a bug with life insurance never expiring in that version, been fixed for a while now

The fact that you're even playing out of DD season is quite a compliment

Thanks for playing and for taking so much time to give feedback, great stuff! I'll respond to things point by point

How does the game feel more random? I'm pretty sure 2 DDs ago the 1 reel system was already there. Is it other stuff that feels random?

Starting symbols are a DD afterthought, there will be a better selection system for them in the future, probably locked behind an unlock

Yeah, Malfunction is probably a bit too much at the moment

I will look at the extra tooltips script to see if anything is stinky there, but it's a Wine exclusive problem so it's odd

Not sure if healing in shops is needed, that's the only thing Plinko and Space Invaders have that the shop doesn't. If anything, maybe Plinko should offer health more consistently

I agree with your ordering of things on the minimap. Symbol sheet should probably be cheaper. Space Invaders is still a rough WIP, I don't know if it's staying

I might leave debug functions available for next Demo Day to let people test things freely, it's not great that you felt the need to avoid enemies later

Headache not working with Rainbow is an oversight on my part. Headache (and Photo for that matter) are actually White, while Rainbow has 5 normal colors. I'll add White to Rainbow

I won't cap Money Shield or Shell or anything else if I can help it. The problem here is that some enemies have no scaling at all. Now that I think of it, the Bodyguard item + no ways to attack is a softlock against Blue Crookey. I'll review all enemies and ensure they have some scaling

Sucker Punch not being able to finish enemies is on purpose, probably won't change it

Space Invaders is not really beatable, I kinda just take what I can and leave it at that. Bad game design though. Again, this minigame is very WIP and kind of on the edge of a trash can

Did you not enjoy Pinball mechanically, or find it too slow, not worth the effort?

Unlock screen will be available during the game eventually, full list of symbols and items too. Currently it's just glued together for DD

I also had some cases of map generation going too vertical with the obstacles, forcing me into Bouncers. I might leave obstacles out of the topmost row to ensure it connects there always (though enemies and especially bosses will still block the path sometimes)

I will lower the requirements for Hearts/Diamonds/Spades/Clubs symbols to 6 of the same color, 8 is a bit unreasonable. Might lower total symbol unlock from 15 to 10 as well, since you didn't unlock it and no one ever wants that many symbols

Not sure why this is useful, but sure I guess?

Thanks, found the bug

What's the space invasers bug, not sure I saw it?

Making them scale with each fight is on my to-do

Interesting that you haven't had any luck with Blue. I thought it's the easiest to win with, since you're taking no damage at all, and grind enemies down with Retaliate. You gotta pick your fights though cause enemies that like to set up will end it. I didn't play a lot since the introduction of unlocks however, so it's possible that the Spade symbol is what made it easy, and that being locked now made Blue that much worse.

Bones I think aren't too bad if you get a Power build. They're worse than Fist at the start, but they even out at +1 Power and become better at +2.

The Malfunction boss is meant to be countered by having a large quantity of symbols. Might be too strong however, probably shouldn't give 2 symbols per turn right away.

Avocado is pure green, the core is brown which is not a symbol color. Might make it black or gray to reduce the risk of confusion.

Color-blind mode is absolutely necessary for full release and will be implemented... Somehow. I have no idea how this is going to play out in practice. Reels fly by fast so glance value is important, I don't know if extra symbols or frames will be clear enough unless I slow down the reels. It'll be a headache to implement for sure

To make the game easier to understand, I think just explicitly telling the player in a tutorial that reel timing matters should be enough. I could even do a hand-holdy tutorial that won't progress until the timing is perfect, but I don't like those.

It was useful, yes. I wish you didn't reroll for Darts so much though, it made all those runs Poison themed

Thanks for playing!

Starting builds will be redone at some point, they're currently too random. Might be reworked into a manual choice system, but it will also be an unlockable thing

Unlocking things that start appearing randomly has the purpose of time gating complex mechanics until the player knows what they mean and (admittedly artificially) encouraging trying different builds. This is a first iteration of unlocks so unlock conditions and the actual unlockables are subject to change

I understand why you feel the map is too free. I might crank up the obstacle and enemy counts on later chapters, or as a thing for higher difficulties. I tried generating the map with higher obstacle count and it turned it into a maze with enemies frequently blocking the way and dead ends. It's not necessarily a worse design, but it doesn't work well with Bouncers. Personally I feel like there's enough pressure to min-max my moves - if I mess around too much, Bouncers might kill a shop with an item I was saving for. Perhaps this would be felt more if the balance was tighter

I might add a thing where refusing a symbol or item choice refunds portion of money spent, then it wouldn't feel as bad to get a dud for 100

Red Wine indeed dissolves, I forgot to update its custom description

Yes

I thought starting games with intros is fairly common, no? But fair enough, maybe at least volume settings should be accessible during the intro somehow

I can probably add support for resizing windows freely, I'll look into it and see if the game doesn't look gross when resized imperfectly

Good suggestions for the silver platter, enter button and symbols window, will add to my to-do

Space Invaders is a WIP, I haven't fully committed to giving it graphics and sounds as I'm not sure if it's staying

Enemy and opponent are indeed the same, I gotta do some proofreading. Cheese is actually not bad - enemies don't get overhealed so at the start of the battle it's just free 3 Poison. It will sometimes annoyingly save the enemy, but it's pretty good overall

Slot machine is semi-randomized. You can stop the first reel manually and time it perfectly once you get the hang of it, but 2nd and 3rd are fully random

Bouncers move up every 10 moves, there's an indicator on the left side of the screen (appears once first warning shows up). The ghost bouncers show up when there's less than 5 moves left

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing!

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

Thanks for playing!

I've had that bug happen a few times, just didn't get around to debugging it because I haven't implemented a seed system and therefore can't consistently cause it

1st chapter is probably too hard indeed, I'm usually finding myself with a broken build mid-chapter 2 if I reach it and just roll over everything from there. I'm aware of this imbalance, just didn't focus on fixing it yet.

Thanks for playing!

There is a main menu, with the lady sitting at the table, and New Run/Quit/Unlocks. It's not much of a menu, but it is there

Yes, there is a lot of randomness in the game, both in actual battles and the map generation

Glad you liked the game

That's an interesting idea. I wouldn't want too many of them due to complexity creep, but something like Diamond but off color (like, a Red symbol that deals damage depending on how many Green you have) or something that scales with the number of different colors in your deck would at the very least provide more support for rainbow decks (which are currently only held by the actual Rainbow symbol)

Damn, thanks for the thorough review

When you press the stop button, the first reel will stop nearly instantly, the rest are up to RNGesus. So you're not exactly in control, but timing the first reel right can be a difference between blocking and hitting Spike with a Beetroot. I understand why this is not clear though, and a better tutorial tooltip is needed. Rusty Cog just lets you time all of them, which lets you pretty much select each turn by hand if you have the patience and enough eye drops.

I haven't "beaten" space invaders ever, that game is kinda unfinished as I'm on the fence about it.

The crash you got probably has something to do with the Perfume item since it appears to be activating, thanks for reporting that

As for the color balance:

It wasn't my intention to make mono colors the best, but they are the most consistent due to how matching works. However, going into one color should hold you back in some other areas, as the only color that has access to everything is Purple, but that has its own problems. My ideal outcome of balance would be that builds focusing on 2 colors, or 3 colors with strong duos, end up being the best. I'm also trying to add enemies, especially bosses, that counter specific weaknesses in builds. For example, if you have no Blue at all, King of Clubs will slap you down. If you have too much Red, Spike will out-retaliate your damage. If you have a meandering slow deck, Queen of Spades will end you. There's  a boss in chapter 2, DJ, that gains strong color-themed buffs that can only be removed by activating that color, meaning that a mono-colored deck will only be able to remove one of the five.

Admittedly, I probably haven't done enough to deal with Green. The only thing that comes close is Chieftain boss, as he purges Poison off when it goes above 10, and since Poison is just a single instance of damage per turn, a Shell will negate it. But he's a Chapter 1 boss so if you can get past that (or just happen to see Malfunction instead)  you're fine for the rest of the run. I should probably give the debuff purge action to a few more enemies.

I have not designed final bosses yet, so I might aim to counter mono-colored decks with them.

Thanks for playing!

I watched your video and it seems like you missed the idea of timing reels to get what you want for each turn. This isn't your fault as it's not really explained and slot machines are assumed to be random with no human influence.

Pinball has been giving me trouble forever, it never felt right. I might just scrap it, or make it significantly easier. Not sure why you felt delayed input on the paddles

Thanks for playing, always very useful to see gameplay videos with live reactions and stuff

I purposefully picked Bribe quite a few times and found it helpful, especially against the Leprechaun. I'll leave it alone for now, the game is far from done and it might be more useful against more aggressive enemies in further chapters

Thanks for reporting the bugs too. I didn't test the blanks and extra turns thoroughly, I admit.

Thanks for playing!

Red/Blue is indeed the most consistent at the moment, but there will be meta unlocks that will change the plums to some other dual-color symbol randomly so it won't be the same every run.

I got Yellow to work many times when I got an early (deal 10% of your chips as damage) or (deal damage equal to the amount of your yellows/2) but otherwise yeah, it's probably not good enough. Leprechaun might get degraded from boss to elite in the future to prevent yellow runs from getting ended by him unavoidably

Thanks for playing, glad you had a good time!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! Design suggestions are always welcome even if I don't implement them - they offer food for thought anyway, and might lead to other discoveries so feel free to post your theorycrafting if you want to

Starting build will be adjusted by meta upgrades in the full game - it will start like this just for the players to get familiar with the basic symbols, then they'll be able to get a more randomized start (for better or worse)

Good point on the chip gain, I myself usually get lost on how much money I actually got from a turn. I might do a thing where the chips counter has a lingering (+X) for a few seconds to show most recent gains

Thanks for reporting bugs too, I'll fix them

Thanks for playing! Your feedback over the last few Demo Days was hugely helpful.

Hovering over tooltips on the slot machine itself used to be a thing, but got removed since the actions execute automatically all the time. The tooltip might go away before you're done reading. However, even that is probably better than not having them at all so I'll probably re-add this feature.

Indeed, blue/red is probably the easiest in the demo. I will likely have meta unlocks later that will randomize the starting reel to some degree and sometimes offer a different dual-colored symbol at the start. 

Thanks for playing!

That's great to hear! Thanks for playing

Thanks for playing!

Yellow is definitely playable, but it does rely on some specific combo pieces to deal consistent damage

Funny that you know someone who makes slot machine games, I'd love to hear their feedback

Thanks for playing! Tons of great feedback in the video

Blue is indeed the most reliable right now, at least I think so. I've made all colors work before, but Blue just has so many commons, it's really easy to build.

Your suggestion to allow players to pick symbol order manually after rolling is genius, though I would worry about extending the playtime considerably and causing analysis paralysis, as each turn now involves carefully considering the optimal order. I might add it just to try it out, but it's probably not what I'm looking for. It would certainly help with clarity, which has been a struggle

Oh, and the slowdown is probably Wine. No one else reported an issue with this. Might be something in the tooltip drawing script that Wine doesn't like

Thanks for playing!

I think games like Slay the Spire have a very convincing illusion of choices and decisions, but ultimately you end up pulling another kind of slot machine to see which 5 cards you get on your turn, and no matter how good your deck is, you'll get some dud turns.

Pinball is kinda just bad, it's not just you. I think a point-based system would probably be more fun

Bouncers are the punishment for walking around too much, as they slowly take away things you didn't get to see. I suppose they would be more of a threat if the good stuff was near the bottom. Right now, the shops, item boxes and elites are all purposefully near the top. I did not consider that putting them there makes bouncers a less interesting threat. Will revise this

Thanks for playing!

I got a lot of feedback regarding understanding of combat mechanics so a good tutorial is definitely overdue. I'm glad to hear that simply playing long enough made it understandable

Pinball might get trashed or reworked; More minigames are planned for other chapters/biomes

Thanks for playing!

I think better combos are due to better starting symbols + adding a good 2-color to the starting reel. There's rarely a dud turn now

I didn't notice the text spillage, will fix. Thanks!

Thanks for playing!

Glad to hear that the game feels more balanced on the first fight now - I think adding Plums to the starting reel really made a difference

I don't think Yellow is that bad, but it might feel that way with this particular boss - the full game will have more boss variety so that might make Yellow better