Slots & Skulls

From the Devs

YOUR WEAPON IS A SLOT MACHINE

Slots & Skulls is a turn-based roguelite. Your weapon is a slot machine, and you build the pool of symbols it can land on. Blades, spells, poisons, thorns, gold engines. Stop the machine's wheels one at a time. Whatever luck hands you decides the fate of that turn.

IN CONTROL, BUT NOT QUITE

112 different symbols: common ones that drop easily from kills, and legendary ones that only bosses drop. Every symbol has its own effect. Some boost the symbol next to them, some spend your health, some damage the enemy, some pay you gold. A few call for quick-fingered skill checks.

After every fight the shop opens. Buy new symbols and power-ups, reroll the stock if you do not like it, lock a symbol you cannot afford yet so it survives into the next shop, or remove a symbol you have outgrown from the machine's pool to streamline your build. Sometimes removing a symbol is smarter than adding one. Before every decision, the chart in the shop shows exactly what a purchase does to your attack, defense, gold, pool size and kill speed.

Luck matters, but not everything is luck. Four active power-ups sit on the d-pad, ready whenever you want them. Up to eight passive power-ups make you readier for the hard fights.

MORE RISK, MORE REWARD ON EVERY LEVEL

Ten levels, five fights each, 33 different enemies drawn pixel by pixel. Every enemy calls for its own strategy. Physical attacks do nothing to armored enemies, but magic goes straight through. Archers can stun you and cost you your next turn. Ice mages can freeze one of your wheels. Burn damage keeps eating your health in real time as the fight goes on. Thieves lift gold from your purse mid fight. Sometimes you face more than one enemy in a single fight.

Clear a level and you move straight into the next one with everything you own. Replay a level you already beat on raised difficulty modes for more symbols, skulls or gems. The higher the difficulty, the more you earn, and the tougher the enemies.

DROP BOXES, PULL SYMBOLS, TRY NEW BUILDS

After every fight you have a chance to win a chest with symbols inside. Depending on the chest's quality it can hold common, rare or epic symbols, or gems you can use on upgrade attempts.

Every fight you win also pays skulls, and you keep them even when you die. Skulls are precious: spend them at the forge to upgrade symbols, on modifiers that stay active for the whole run and can change how you play from the ground up, on adopting a cat and activating its pact, or on abilities that each shape the game deeply and take it beyond a game of chance.

THE FORGE DOES NOT JOKE

At the forge you can raise a symbol from +0 to +10. When a symbol is upgraded, all of its stats grow. On the other hand, the higher its level, the lower the chance of reaching the next one. And the tensest part: if the upgrade fails, you lose the symbol completely, with no way back.

Since the forge is that merciless, there are a few exceptional items that make things easier for you: gems. A green gem slightly improves a symbol's upgrade chance. A blue gem stops a failure from destroying the symbol, it only drops it one level. A yellow gem is extremely rare and guarantees the upgrade.

You can smelt the spare symbols you do not need back into skulls.

CHANGE THE GAME WITH CATS AND ABILITIES

Before every run starts, you can bring a cat if you like. You adopt cats with skulls, and every cat comes with a pact that lasts the whole run: one advantage and one disadvantage. One of them, for example, pays you interest after every fight based on the gold you hold, but gives every enemy a chance to steal a little gold from you. The cat you picked before the run hangs around the fight stage doing its own thing and never leaves you alone.

Also before the run starts, you can pick an ability. Abilities are a single move you can use only once per fight. The last symbol landed wrong just as a critical was about to hit? Use an ability and spin that wheel once more. Or skip this turn and double the effect of every symbol that lands on the next one. Six different abilities in total change the game from top to bottom.

COME BACK STRONGER EVERY TIME WITH MODIFIERS

21 different modifiers can be activated with skulls: more health, more damage, a chance for one last move when you die, two more wheels on the slot machine, and plenty more waiting for you to discover.

PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS

Invite a friend from your Steam list and play 1v1. A match opens with a draft: you pick three symbols each, in turns, and a symbol one of you takes is closed to the other. Then the round begins. You both beat the same enemies on your own screens, buying symbols from the shop after every fight. This part plays much like a campaign level, with one difference: this time the boss is the friend you invited. After four fights you duel them. After the duels the anvil opens: raise your symbols and you go in stronger than your rival, but you can lose the symbol you bet on. First to the set number of rounds wins the match. If you would rather skip the enemies, pick DUEL ONLY mode.

AUTO MODE FOR IDLE LOVERS

Once a fight starts, your slot machine spins, the symbols that land attack on their own, the enemy hits back, and the cycle repeats until one side falls. Turn on Auto Mode and the reels stop themselves; you only step in when a symbol calls for a skill check. Auto 2X Mode makes everything 2x faster. Your real decisions happen between fights: which symbols to keep, how far to push them on the anvil (every attempt can burn them), which cats to adopt, and which modifiers to take.

For Endless Mode you can even enable Full Auto Mode, which lets you try your build's strength without any interaction.