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A jam submission

The Very Serious Gambling Fun TimeView game page

"I'm not fond of balatro mechanics" says the person who has the high score
Submitted by theChief โ€” 8 hours, 3 minutes before the deadline
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The Very Serious Gambling Fun Time's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#2963.7083.708
Visuals#3534.0834.083
Enjoyment#7573.4583.458
Overall#9403.4083.408
Creativity & Theme#20172.8752.875
Seriousness#20252.9172.917

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Game Engine

Other/Custom

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Incredibly polished and juicy for something you threw together in seven hours; quite mad really.

I get highly motivated by any sort of global leaderboard; so I enjoyed rogue-like aspects and coming up with a strat that would get a decent score. And that part was really fun for me.

The sfx is nice, where do you get it from / how to do you make it? This is something I am so very poor at.

It is entirely RnG as you say, which is a kiss / curse in my opinion. When my plan came together and I hit an absolute god run on the strat I had been cooking up, it activated neurons deep in the recesses of my brain that I didn't know still worked. But hitting a bunch of multipliers over and over to bust out with not enough score, not so much. I think the complete RnG systems work well for sweaty degenerates who don't mind playing 50 times. But for a casual player it might just feel unfair and I could see someone dropping off in the first couple of minutes if they get a bad first run.

There were a couple of smaller UI/UX issues I noticed. I hope you don't mind me saying this is quite a casual 'second monitor' game, but as I was playing it on my second screen, I was clicking to grab focus it would also start the bar to spin the wheel. It took me by surprise the first time it happened and I had to be careful from then onwards. I don't know how other players would feel, but I might have liked the first click that grabs focus to not start the spin. The second issue, like another commenter mentioned, was the UI at the edge of the screen, I didn't notice the tickets in the top right and the upgrades in the bottom left until perhaps my 5th run.

I had tonnes of fun with this, and presumably you can see how many times I actually played on your analytics lol. Thank you very much.

Submitted

The visuals are great and really add a lot to the game feel, making this grame really satisfying to play. However I think that there is not that much active gameplay, which could partly be solved by making the items a bit more cheaper, but adding more "build-planning". 

I would like to see future updates!

Submitted

insane juice, INSANE JUICE

Submitted(+1)

Incredible work on the visuals, animation and feedback! It feels very juicy. However I wonder if there is a mechanic I missed, because what I experienced was nothing more than a slot machine. I didnโ€™t see what much difference between a super-spin and a regular one, and the perks never really counter-balance pure luck. So I never achieved to go further than round 3, but most of the time I lose at 2. I still enjoyed the experience, but I must admit that I felt just like pressing a button to throw dices.

Developer

Yeah unfortunately it is almost entirely rng, I only had 7 hours to make a game so I had to cut back all the actual features ๐Ÿซ  V2 is much better though, I've added multiple wheels that you can buy and choose from, and a super spin does more than just halving the chance you land on a dud + 1.25x score! 

Submitted(+1)

it was a good game i loved the idea , i loved it

Submitted(+1)

The artwork is absolutely lovely looking, and reminds me so much of those mobiles games that looks pretty decent, the mechanics are simple, and it's just a fun game to play!

Submitted(+1)

I'm BTB and actually got on the leaderboard (8th right now), this game is pretty fun but it could be nice to have a few more possible upgrades!

Submitted(+1)

This was a really enjoyable experience! It was not only really well made, but it was also pretty addictive to see how high a score we could obtain in the end!

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

I shall speak truth to power and say game is passive slot machine clicker. I realise not really cause u got to keep hitting the green bar that I am failing so it does depend on skill. XD

In terms of theme 100%, in terms of creativity, not so much though ;)

Beyond that Visuals and audio is super polished. My only advise is to slap a theme on it with the spin or some weird story, think street fighter jewel jam or something like that. Give people something else to do rather than just spin

Submitted

Wow, this is superpolished! Great animations and feel. I thought it was a bit too easy to hit the green center when spinning though. Great and fun game and the leaderboard adds so much replayability. Great job!

Submitted(+1)

Well, you can definetly tell someone with experience has made this, the game feels extremely juicy, super clean and consistent graphics, really matches what i see when i go to a bar and there's an old dude gambling with all the animations and sounds, the text pops up perfectly, nothing just happens and every single detail has an animation, it truly couldn't be better visually.

The audio also adds to how good it feels, the spinning, the super spin sfx, the points being calculated, the same way everything has an animation everything has a sound effect and it adds so much to the game, the only thing i don't like audio wise is the background music, i find it kinda annoying to be honest.

As for the theme, it is a bit generic, and it's a very literal interpretation of "spin to win".

Following the theme, gambling is inherently serious, but i think it's missing just a little bit more to push it over the edge, some other similar games added just a tiny bit of story to emphasize the seriousness of the situation.

As for the gameplay, it is simple and fun, i just find that there is a lack of information, you can deduce what each tile does by just playing, but a hover with information would have been nice. As for the upgrades, they are more inspired than other games while not doing anything revolutionary or game changing (that i've seen), but a very positive point is that they DO make you feel more powerful when you buy them just by reading the text, you can tell they will do something good. Another thing i don't quite like is upgrading being limited to between rounds, that's something i personally dislike, as as soon as you finish buying them you are once again left to rng, and you have no way to adapt to the bad luck you're getting, but i am pretty bad at playing so maybe it's just a skill issue for me. Finally, the super spin feels great and is fun to aim for, but, what does it do? is it just more speed? if so what is the benefit of spinning faster? or does it increase odds of landing on somewhere good? i think that a small short tutorial explaining this core mechanic would have been good!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much, this is incredibly valuable feedback! I feel like it's fun enough that I could improve it, but you're right that it needs some changes. I like your idea of always having access to the shop, I hadn't thought of that ๐Ÿค” love the hover tooltips too, that would be a great touch!

I'm sorry the background music is annoying, it's procedural ๐Ÿ˜… I'm no good with music, I'll definitely have to figure that out for a full release.

The entire game is currently 100% rng, super spin only gives an extra 1.25x multiplier and makes it half as likely you'll land on a dud. It feels great to get, which is the point, but doesn't actually change very much! 

Thanks for playing ๐Ÿ˜

Submitted(+1)

Flawless presentation. I am stimulated. 

Submitted(+1)

Very enjoyable game, the visuals makes the anticipation of the spins multiply as you hope to get a good result

Submitted(+1)

This is a good example of how game feel can take a very simple concept and make it addicting. Not my kind of game, but had to force myself to stop. This is why I donโ€™t gamble.

Developer(+1)

Ahaha yeah, totally understandable. There have been a couple of people who have said the same! Gotta be real careful as a game dev ๐Ÿ˜ฌ

Submitted

Very fun and addicting! A lot of it is probably just luck but itโ€™s still so satisfying watching that number go up with insane multipliers. Really goes to show what juice does to a game. Also I donโ€™t mean to brag or anything, but Iโ€™m at the top of the leaderboard :)

Developer

It is 100% luck ๐Ÿซ  all a super spin does is give you an extra multiplier and halves the chance of hitting a dud! I'm glad you had fun ๐Ÿ˜

Submitted(+2)

Amazing animations and art work, really stellar, some of the UI could do with being moved from the edge of the screen though. I also wish I had a better understand of what a super spin was/what it did. The modifiers feels fun and interesting, its a fun short game though the game often felt out of my hands which can be frustrating

Developer

Yeah that's fair, it was all done in such a rush, it's not my finest UI work ๐Ÿซ  

Super spin gives a 1.25x multiplier and halves the chance of you landing on a dud, and it some of the modifiers change it. It's mostly there to give you a sense of agency lmao, otherwise it is just a random number button ๐Ÿ˜‚

I need to figure out how to give the player even more control though for sure. It is completely out of your hands, maybe it needs more modifiers that change the wheel ๐Ÿค” I'll have a think!

Submitted

The UI is honestly fine overall just wanted to share what i noticed :). 

In regards to more player agency, not to needlessly plug my own game but I added a mechanic where you spin your cursor around in the opposite direction to slow down the wheel during a spin. (though people have a really hard time understanding that mechanic in my game ๐Ÿ˜ญ)

For your game if you wanted to give more direct control I imagine something like rapidly pressing spacebar slows down the wheel slightly, and the faster you press the more you slow it down. So you can nudge the result if you get good and judging the spin and how fast to slow it down. But also i assume your wheel decides the result as soon as it starts spinning?

Developer

Thanks ๐Ÿ˜

I'll have a go, but you're right - it does decide the result, and because I'm slightly insane... The entire thing is server-authoritative to make sure the leaderboard is unhackable ๐Ÿ˜‚ so I'm thinking the player agency might have to come more from moving things around? Maybe I need to have multiple wheels, and you can decide the order. Maybe you also roll addition/subtraction/multiplication/division, and it's up to you to get the best scores - so if you get a dud, maybe you put that after a subtraction so your score is -0, that way you can make the best of a bad lot

Submitted(+2)

This feels like what Balatro did to poker but Spin the Wheel. Great job on the FX and the inclusion of Leaderboards was nice. I cracked the top 10 and lost on the final round.

Developer(+1)

Nice job! I could probably have made it a bit easier, but I went mad with power and added a bunch of modifiers in the last couple of hours, which I think diluted the pool a bit too much ๐Ÿ˜‚ not a lot of time for balance work!

Thanks for the feedback โ˜บ๏ธ

Submitted(+2)

I'm not sure I knew what I was doing ๐Ÿ˜‚, but the pleasing visuals, satisfying audio and scratching of the "numbers go up" itch made it enjoyable to play!

Developer(+2)

Thank you! There is not much of a game in there, it was made in roughly 7 hours ๐Ÿ˜‚ I put all the effort into juice as you can probably tell. I'm glad it landed ๐Ÿ˜

(+1)

Simple yet entertaining!