Presentation is great, sound is great, the Idea is generally cool.
It comes with a few major problems:
1.) The gambling through slot machine gameplay doesnt work well, because its not plannable or influential enough.
You can try to line up by pressing stop at the right time, but it still ends up to be too much of a gamble to call it skill.
Because of it not needing skill but being random/luck based, the entire gameplay consists of pressing a button and creating your "build" out of a too narrow selection of items/symbols.
Picking new symbols is rarely a good idea, because why would you add another weapon lvl 1 decreasing your chance to hit your existing lvl 3 weapon?
I asked that myself a lot while playing and came to the conclusion that the game has a design problem OR lacks complexity to provide valuable effects.
Theres also no combos or dependencies, no chain effects or anything going on, supporting the use of symbol combinations.
Some sort of combo sets that you can get would have added a lot of depth.
Like hitting with 3 different types of daggers causes another roll or shield and hammer causes Shield Bash which adds the armor to your damage and stuns.
2.) The main problem through all of that, is the content is not there.
In my less than 2 hours (112 minutes) i unlocked nearly all items (only 3 more to go) and got to the final level (failed it sadly).
That means i am about 20 minutes short to finish the game in its entirety.
I could run endless mode, but honestly, the gameplay isnt complex enough to entertain you for that.
Theres not enough items and mechanics present in the game, that would warrant experimenting with different builds.
Weapons arent that different, but overall the system has several issues that causes a lack of variation or "point".
3.) Games systems limit variety and reason.
Theres a few different weapons, but frankly they arent really different.
The weapons lack uniqueness to set them off of others and so it doesnt really matter what you pick.
Ok that one weapon does lifesteal, that one causes poison, the other can stun the enemy, the other deals damage and magic damage.
Sounds different on paper, but in reality isnt worth much of a thought when it comes to the gameplay.
You will end up picking the poison dagger because not only does poison go through enemy armor, its also dealing far more reliable damage than any other weapon.
"But lifesteal sounds so strong", but isnt.
Because lifesteal doesnt do much when you are dead in one hit.
This will only get worse even with more health and armor.
Armor has a max amount of 100, so its pointless to stack more armor anyway.
Even worse, the lifesteal isnt good enough anyway to keep you alive.
All of this gets undermined by a meta progression ability, that automatically heals you after every round (HP regeneration), which is fast to level up and heals you significantly enough, that it overshadows any lifesteal you can do.
Stun Hammer sounds good on paper, but the stun rarely happens and is an overall not interesting effect anyway.
Even when critical striking, you stun the enemy for one action at max and i had fights that went for over 6 rounds with several times hitting the enemy but not stunning even once.
The rest of the cast is just different damage numbers.
The benefit between magic and physical damage feels insignificant to even make a that difference of adding two damage types.
Like, i get it, magic ignores armor.
But enemies rarely come with armor.
In general poison outclasses any other effect and damage.
I dont understand why magic spells like "fireball" exist, when you cant set enemies on fire.
The passive perks have the same issue.
You will find only: get lifesteal (as mentioned an irrelevant perk), increase damage, increase max life.
The game doesnt provide interesting perks that change rules, like "lifesteal adds armor" or "hitting critical gives you another reroll".
There occasionally are some minor effects like this, but very rarely, less significant and less interesting.
The game is too less game, offers too less content and isnt designed well enough.
Its minimalistic in every way and catches the hype of other recent slot machine/luck based games.
Minimalistic however, isnt a good thing here.
I recommend ignoring this title and instead of paying a bit less and get less, rather pay a bit more and pick something like Clover Pit and get a far better and more fleshed out game.
Hate to say it, but thats what it is. Or get Dungeon Clawler, Ballionaire or Dicemancer, maybe Dicealot.
This feels like a budget version.
The only thing that is good here is the presentation. It has a great style.
Yet it needed at least a full year of development to add more complexity and content.
Im sorry, i dont feel it here.
