Deck builders are all the rage these days. Finding ones that break the mold is always a challenge and trust me I look at a good deal of them. This one tosses the mold out completely. It’s a deck builder concept but you’re building out a slot machine where you have to increase the synergies that spin in order to pay your ever-increasing rent.
The pixel-based interface is fairly simple. Your either spinning or you are choosing items and symbols to add. Occasionally you get mail to pay your rent and that is it. Simple simplicity.
The game is 100% about creating synergies. The main type of symbols is ones that just score coins, ones that interact with other symbols (like dwarves drink the beer they are next to, or flowers grow into another symbol due to rain), ones that destroy themselves and have some sort of effect. Then there are items that do all kinds of crazy things.
The game loop again is simple:
Spin, Score, Add Symbol, Pay, Add Item, that’s it simple but addicting.
I have seen people do insane things. Like score 30,000 coins a spin. I can barely get 100 a spin at max and have never broken the 500 rent mark. So I am obviously not experiencing everything.
Since its Early Access, there are definitely things I would like to see added. Ways to mitigate the randomness of symbols. So there is a double-edged sword in adding more symbols. Only 3 symbols are offered to you between rounds so keeping your synergies is harder the more symbols are added. Same with items. I would also like to see things like meta progression, high scores, achievements, more ways to clear older symbols out as the game progresses. Mitigating randomness is always a good thing in a random-based game.
All in all, I think this is already a fun little game and I look forward to seeing what it adds.
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Semi-retired game designer and developer trying to use my experience to enhance the strategy and strategy adjacent gaming sector. Strategy game player for over 35 years. Game development experience in AAA, Indie, and Board.