Behind Slot Raider

Joining a Game Jam

It’s been over 2 years since my last Jam, and after much convincing myself to take on a new challenge I decided to choose a ~1wk, Rated Jam with a sizable amount of participants; I settled on Juice Jam II with 1000+ people joined at the time of writing this. Juice can best be described this video (contributed by the Jam)

Original Ideas

One thing I remember from previous Jams is time is at a limited quantity and most of your first ideas don’t end up making it into the game. Working professionally on casino games, I decided a could pull off a Slot Mechanic, but with something more… Being a fan of games like Slay the Spire I shot for the moon and thought:

A roguelike slot game where you battle monsters by spinning reels, gaining chance, and gold, while collecting new tiles to add to the slot machine. As the game progresses it gets more difficult, with added loot to find and use.

This, of course, I knew would take more time (and motivation) than I had. Eventually I came up with a simple slot mechanic with payouts of gold, food (+hp), and skulls (-hp). If you reach 0 hp or gold then the game is over. After play-testing and balancing I was rather happy with the end result. Of course, there is much to improve upon, but it’s a good start if I ever decide to expand upon it.

Development

I felt the slot mechanic was flat out the most important part of the game, which I spent ~2 days on perfecting, and then ~2 more days of tweaking and integrating assets (Cainos, Lornn).

The next step was adding audio (Shapeforms), using both Arcane Activations for ambience and The Mint for coinage.

Then came finalizing all screens: Title, Game/Slot Machine, and Game Over screens. I’m happy to save the game will save your current progress, allowing the player to quit and pick their session up later.

Finally, adding juice (using Juice FX by CodeManu for Tile Symbol animations) and various particles effects.

Critique

Overall, I was happy with the end result but wish it was more balanced and had some kind of overall goal to it, however it’s more of a simple arcade game with randomized results.

Something I want to add (possibly later):

• Collectables
• Some sort of completion goal
• Unlock new background images
• More power-ups to fight the baddies
• More baddies to fight