It's a fun little game, not sure that I got the right way to play it though.
Good job.

Nice job! I love that this is super chill, but you gotta strategize. Also using slots to tell a story is something I haven't seen since I played slime slots in dragon quest. I definitely played this for like a half hour. The only thing I really wanted on this was some chill island music and some ambient island sounds, yeah that would make this so nice.

@fizzpowmike1 slime slots, I'll have to look that up!

Yea I actually created a whole dialogue system where the characters would converse w each other and show their personalities but I ended up axing it cuz I was afraid there was already too much on screen. I'll have to port that to another game sometime.

Survival and games of chance go so well together! Bravo on combining the two. Gameplay was simple yet engaging. The balance was just right and led to strategic thinking every turn. Was able to survive on day 16, and I was really feeling the pressure to make the right choices!

Won on the 11th day, super fun concept! Would love to see a more expanded version with audio and other scenarios.

Definitely don't rush through this game. Beat it in 12 days but it took a few playthroughs. I like the risk vs reward aspect of allowing you to spin the reels instead of choosing them. I did it even when I had a choice simply to see what would happen. Maybe randomizing the events or at least obscuring them to the player would add some spiciness to the game too.

@solo6383 totally, I really tried to weave skill and luck into the core gameplay. I think a full version might be more like a roguelike or boardgame where events are more randomized to give playthroughs even more replayability

Nice Job! Its a good survival game... At the first play I spam the Spin button, and of course I lost haha

I like how this game has elements of chance, but also involves some strategic thinking in order to win. The instructions kind of confused me, but once I got into the game and realized that I could just look at the slot guide instead of guessing which way those arrows make the panels move (I know; I'm slow :joy: ), I managed to beat the game on my second try. It still took a while, though, got up to day 18 before I made it out, but at the very least, I did not get eaten by gorilla demons and played it super cautiously.

The game had an unnerving pace to it despite having no music. Knowing I could take as long as I needed to plan out my decision but still had to deal with impending doom was a little worrying, but overall, I enjoyed the game quite a bit and can say that I haven't come across a lot of games like this on Ludum Dare.

I wish the game would have indicated which day I got out on on the ending screen. I nearly forgot and it would be nice to have some proof with a screenshot that I made it as far as I did, haha.

That aside, all this really needs is audio. Although I must say, it's hard for me to spend as long in games that have absolutely no audio as much as I did with this one. This is a pretty solid entry, all in all.

This is a really neat mechanic that I'd really love to see expanded upon. Nice work!

Great job! I enjoyed thinking about the different possibilities I could spent my action points on.

I love it, super clever and creative! Only complaint is, the end screen says to leave a comment with how many days it took, but that's after it's no longer possible to check how many days it took! I _believe_ it was 10, but I wasn't paying close attention.

In any case, I love this and would love to see some sort of expanded version.

@random-storykeeper I love it when people tell me they won on days 17-19 cuz I know it's super tense in that situation with tigers and storms flying everywhere but you manage to magically make it out in time. Totally understandable about missing the guide, it's not exactly a common mechanic.

@philomory that really is one of my regrets lol. I thought about doing it but it required persistence between scenes which wasn't set up yet and it was 5 am so I just crashed. Thanks for playing though and ~10 days is very fast!

I love this game. Escaped on the 10th day.

Very well designed, great pacing, interesting decisions.

It was very engaging to refine the slots and to build up characters as you go.

Ah, I'm just very impressed with the game. I would love to see more, like more options to influence the slots and more scenarios. Great job!

@peachtreeoath As I said, it may not have been 10 days; that said, I know it was immediately after getting my fifth member, I started my final day with a spin that only required 6 adjustments to make the raft. Regardless, super cool!

I wont lie, I went into this game thinking it might be enjoyable. I did not expect getting addicted to it! Really interesting concept, my only major piece of feedback is that the menu on the right could have been larger and clearer (possibly along the top of the screen vertically).

I could see this working with a variety of different visual themes if you ever were to expand it. Great game.

The tutorial screen left me pretty confused as to how the game works at first, but after some fiddling it became apparent. The slot machine mechanic is clever. I kind of wanted to have a way to flip characters around for an action, as some days were just wasted due to bad luck. But that just happens and you hope for better luck the next day.

I did end up winning, but the victory page didn't show on what day I won, so I cannot tell you what day it was. Somewhere in the final third I think.

The art is clear, but one of my main pet-peeves with graphics that I always have to mention when I see it occured here: some sprites is scaled differently. There's blown-up pixelart sprites as well as sharp anti-aliased HD art and the lack of a uniform choice there is something I hate seeing. Sound, obviously, would have added a *lot* to the game as well.

All in all, a clever game that I think I am gonna play another round of!

*EDIT: I played another round and won on day 10.*

@flaterectomy Totally get that. I actually read your blog post last night about consistency in art and I thought about how I could improve that next time around with some better planning. Thanks for the insight!

Wow, that was really awesome. I liked the twist, that you need stuff you maybe already got rid off later on.
The Mechanics was something new and I liked it.

Really good Job
Well Done

Awesome game, I love the art style, and I think with some music & sounds it could be even better, through it would have been cool if the dangerous slots did something special like if you got a bunch of storms in a row something would happen, but it has a lot of potential in it and I hope to see more games like it in the future.

@fallingflatstudios That was something I wanted to pull off but wasn't sure how to not overwhelm the player. Like I wanted the events to all do different things like say, if you leave a Storm showing on a reel (in one of the 3 positions vertically) it would get zapped and be locked the next round. I leaned on the simpler side but yea I think w a longer game I could introduce those mechanics more slowly to the player. I appreciate your input!

This was surprisingly engaging; I first thought it was going to be a drag with the slots but then realized this is basically a deckbuilder with little control over what cards you have. Biggest complaint is that the reusable combos are wasted if you've killed all the things they remove; combos are rough and that feels bad to get a combo you can't meaningfully use. It's even worse for the tiger king and storm combos, since you don't always control when you get their effect and it feels worse to pass on a big combo than to use it suboptimally.

Over all, a solid concept that could do with more options, combos, and content. But not bad.

@ketura great analysis, I've always wanted to explore deckbuilder mechanics in other genres and you actually picked up on some of my motivations. I like that you broke down the emotional impact of certain actions, that gives me a lot of insight. I wonder if I could add more reusable combos that are like the Beach Party so players feel positive progression rather than missed opportunities.

Really cool idea, I literally have never seen something like this before. I think because of that it was a little off-putting at the beginning as I was a bit confused, but the pre-level with 999 attempts mostly remedied that. I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and before long I was min-maxing and strategizing and pretty immersed in that way, which is really impressive for how mechanically simple the game is. Honestly it reminds me a lot of yhatzee, which is a game I love.

Sometimes the arrows tripped me up on which direction they went (like, if they were "pushing" the wheel, it changes the expected direction), and I kind of wish there was some kind of highlighter for when you hovered over a castaway that indicated where they were in the icon stack. Obviously these are small QoL things, so no biggie. I did like how easy it was to tell what color represented a castaway just from the art.

It was really enjoyable and I genuinely had fun! I can see how this could easily be iterated on and expanded as well. Nice work!

@wheffle ooo tbh I didn't think about the hover one, especially if there was a small shine or particle effect on the icon stack. I'm possibly considering it for a further release so any feedback is good!

Cool spin (excuse the pun) on a survival game, I liked the artwork as well! Great job!

Really enjoyed this. Fairly strategic and the randomness (risk and reward) adds replayability.

I agree with the issue others described about not being able to see how many days I took on the end screen. And some audio would be nice, but time is scarce the jam.

Edit: My lucky turn 10 win


The initial state of turn 10 was close enough that I could spend 8 actions to move everything into place.

I got off on day 14! Really good game with the balance of randomness and strategy. Also liked the detail that you needed those mice to get rid of the tigers (which I noticed after eliminating them and having 4 tigers all the sudden taking up space). I like that trade-off strategizing though! I had a bit of an issue that the arrows having the opposite meaning to what I expected, so I wasted a few critical actions here and there because I see them as the direction you want to spin the wheel. I also built a rap trap before day 3 because I could before I realized they had no use until after you get rats. So perhaps not allowing the player to waste actions they have no use for would be a good idea. For the meaning of the arrows, I'm not sure short of allowing an undo of one step. The graphics was nice and it was really easy to get into the game. The interactive tutorial was a really nice touch too, but I happened to start the game on step 2 before reading step three... oops! By I guess my :slot_machine: skills were all right. The (in order) bit on the last got me a bit scared because I got worried the icons had to be placed left to right in that sequence just as I had gotten the light bulb in place. I was happy to note there was no particular requirement on it.

@local-minimum the opposite arrow thing has been a problem for several other people, I didn't realize something like an undo would fix that so great suggestion. ARGH I didn't notice that 'in order' was still in the game, I meant to take it out but forgot! It was cuz I used to have actions take both scatter (any order, like have 3 wood anywhere) and in order resources. What you just said though made me think of some ways to push a 2nd version, where there are some more videogame mechanics on top of the core mechanics, similar to how Dungeons of Dredmor (and your LD game) places realtime mechanics onto a turnbased core. Thanks and it's always a pleasure to hear your feedback.

Interesting idea. I killed the rats too early, so I could not get rid of the tigers and therefore lost... But cool game!

I managed to escape on day 15 on my third try, took my first try to mostly figure out how the game works. I like it, it could use some sounds & music. I think it's a really interesting concept & I haven't seen anything like it before.

Great idea for a game! I like that you can play this at your own pace, which is important because a lot of strategizing is involved if you want to do well. The progression system adds a lot of depth to this game, and I'm impressed you were able to fit it into a LD game. I think some music and sound effects would go a long way to adding to the overall mood.
Really fun game - thanks for making it!

I agree with the arrow thing. It tripped me up too at first.

The intuitive behaviour of pressing the up arrow would be for the three visible parts of the wheel to move up as well, but they actually move downwards. However, the arrow direction matches the intuitive move direction of the "All Slots" interface. So they're opposites.

A way to reconcile them could be by changing the appearance: instead of clicking an up arrow, you click the top item to reveal it.

@zuf oh that's a good idea, just make the top item feel like a clickable button in the first place. Someone else had mentioned to me that a swipe interface might make it feel tactile on mobile, and that might sidestep the issue as well.

It was a bit hard to understand at the start but after that, I had fun with the game =).

@peachtreeoath, nice game! I definitely see a bit of the Dicey Dungeons influence :)

I managed to escape on the 8th day, with just enough actions after doing a beach party on the 7th day! I like the mechanics and there are some interesting ideas such as having to keep rats or storms around for the advanced tech and the tiger upgrade only usable once. I think from a balance perspective though, it doesn't seem that worth it to keep the rats around; I think it would be interesting to have more upgrades that let the player feel like they can mitigate the rng more (e.g. an interesting choice would be upgrading the number of actions vs an upgrade that lets the middle character move 2 spaces for 1 action).

Congrats on your first solo LD!

Very good game! It's kinda like Dice Thrown meets deck management? Unique for sure and fun! Managed to leave on day 14. You really need to find all 5 and throw as many parties as possible before the difficulty starts to ramp up on day 14 I'm guessing. Great job!

PS - I had to think very carefully about which way the arrows would spin the slot because I got it wrong sometimes.

@herman-chau yea that's a good idea, giving players the feeling of progression not through power but through more control. I considered stuff like choosing a class in the beginning like a roguelike (or Dicey) where maybe one class allows 2 free spins a day, vs a class w more actions or something. I'll definitely think of this one and thanks for the feedback, I really was afraid of those last 2 actions not being attractive to players so I kept them down to requiring 3 resources only.

@madbarron yea that's a great strat and I wish I had more routes the player could take but that would've been probably too daunting if I had too many available actions. Either way, just remember if you get stranded irl to just keep the parties going!

Nice game! It's a fun mix of strategy and chance. I think it would be cool if some of the obstacles had negative effects when rolled, like preventing nudges for that survivor or removing an action.

@mao another good one! I had ideas such as a giant gorilla taking up 5 slots (so if you land on it, it represents how hard it is to run away from it), but I actually didn't think about one that just plain locked you if you hit it. That would be a terrifying entity to have on your slots

So the tutorial confused me a lot; it showed one window with the task, but then the game started, I got a bunch of quests that had slightly different format with no instruction (do I have to do them in order? what will happen when I use this one and not this one? how can I do 2-person quests with 3 people? etc.), and there were additional, unexplained things on the screen. Perhaps the tutorial should look exactly the same as the game does? I also didn't quite get why the quest I did didn't work, until I realized you have to have rats present to use the "build rat trap" button. :/ I thought that I should build it ahead since there would be rats the next day.

But after restarting it and when I already had some idea what to do, it got more fun. Lots of planning needed, for sure. I got killed by demon gorilla, but it was enjoyable! I liked how the difficulty gradually went up.

@ynneblack great feedback, I'll definitely be taking another look at how I can onboard the player w that many unfamiliar mechanics. Glad you didn't quit altogether and gave it another shot!

I really like this, it's a great combination of luck mixed with the consequences of your own action, except those consequences are kind of rippling forward in a cool way, too.

I won my first game, but it was really pretty lucky. I was initially confused, and I think there were two key parts that I didn't get immediately. First, I didn't get that the slots list on the right was a map that I could use to figure out how far and which way a certain thing was. I just thought I had a 1-tile vision and sort of blundered around. Second, I didn't understand that my actions were impacting the tileset. For example in my first game I spent my early days trying to build rat traps even though I had no rats. I didn't realize the rats were tiles, and could be seen on the map.

After a bit it suddenly dawned on me how it worked and I was like "oh cool this is gonna be fun!" I assumed my first game would be a loss, but then I got a lucky spin on day 14 that I didn't really deserve:


So of course I was like well next time I'm going WRECK this game!

But the sword of variance cuts both ways. I felt smart by staying on top of vegetation, but the my mid-game bogged down, I was late getting the others on the team, and suddenly time was up:


That pic shows something that is maybe a little splinter in the experience: It's a bit of a drag to count out the possible future moves, cross-indexing between the goal to view the list, the faces to confirm the order, and then the map to see the spaces away. I'm like "ok this guy can go here, that's 3, then this one goes 2 and that one... okay not gonna work." A second feelsbad is the "nuttin you can do" moment. Like, you have 2-3 moves left but nothing can be accomplished.

Those are probably unavoidable and they weren't a big deal, but figured I'd mention them. In that last screenshot you can see I threw up my hands and just went for it because there was only one useful thing to do.

A couple of times I found myself wishing for a "bonus move" consumable, maybe I could make a certain combo to save a coconut for later and then drink it for a 1 move energy bonus or something.

So I played a little bit more, and here is my best run...

I got a nice early start and kept my slots wheel clean:


After that I invested in a beach party, caught a second one by luck, and that let me force a third!

Here I am walking off on Day 10, leaving the island nice and neat:


Overall this is really solid! I think it could use some cool sounds to take the interaction with the machine to the next level, but it's definitely the kind of thing that makes me want to take it for one more spin. The gameplay flows really nicely from the theme, and it's such an unusual use of the slots idea, making it really novel.

Great job on your solo outing!

@pkenney loved hearing the playthroughs, especially the ups and downs of RNG lol. Agreed, I really wish I had time to have an undo so players would feel like they could play with the reels more and not have to sit there with a calculator. I actually really like the idea of a consumable. That would've been a neat, repeatable action to take that essentially stores up actions for later rounds, and cheaper than a beach party since it's just one-use. Glad to hear the game is hitting the "just one more turn" feeling, it makes me more confident I have a good foundation if I continue.

Really cool take on survival games.
I was probably most impressed with the amount of strategy you managed to fit into it in the time frame, the decision making between spinning again or forcing it was always a dilemma.
I'd love to see this idea expanded further, there's still a lot of untapped potential here with the slots mechanics.
Great job!

This is one of the most innovative games I've ever played.

Cool and very original game! I managed to win my first game, and I think it was around day 15. (Perhaps you could show the day of winning in the end screen?) The second game I won in day 11, and on the third try on day 7. :smile: I enjoyed playing the game.

At first I didn't get which rats and storms I was trying to get rid off, they just didn't seem to disappear on the left. :wink: But at some point I got the idea!
Comparing the slots with the overview on the right and with the goals was a bit tedious, counting how many moves I would need to reach a certain goal. Perhaps hovering over a person's slot could highlight the corresponding slot on the right?
The background is nice, it's a pity it's hidden behind the goals.

Well done! :thumbsup:

@Papaver Holy crap day 7, don't know how you guys do it. Now that you mention it, hovering over a person could also highlight how far they can move with the # of moves you have. Great feedback!

Nice game! This is a very interesting way to interpret the theme, and I think it is very well executed. The graphics look nice, and the gameplay is very interesting. I found it a little bit difficult with only 7 actions per day, but I definitely think there is a learning curve. Well done!

I like the audio atmosphere of the game. Nice job!

What an awesome idea! I love these kinds of games, reminds me a bit of the card game Friday. I managed to escape on day 11, so not sure how the game plays afterwards but it looked to me like it would have gotten much harder the longer you play. The only thing which got a bit cumbersome was having to count how many moves away I am from purchasing something (especially to win the game).
I would love to see the concept be turned into a full game!

@sibi that's pretty funny actually. I'm not a huge boardgame player but I'm really fascinated by their game design. I knew there was some game that I had heard of before that was island survivor themed (which was Friday), but I mistakenly recalled Robinson Crusoe instead. I then proceeded to spend the first few hrs of the jam watching YT vids on how to play Robinson Crusoe. I derived SOME inspo from it, but I was mostly thinking "holy crap this is the most complex game I've ever seen". And yea, the game does get harder but you also have the potential to gain more max actions and reels so I was hoping for it all to balance out in the end. Thanks for the feedback!

Really interesting concept! You had my brain moving for once :sweat_smile:

I wasn't able to win though, merely unlocking the guy with brains at the end.

@itsdanidre your avatar looks like the characters I have in game :)

I'm green guy in the middle :rofl:

Interesting idea. Like a few people are mentioning the rng feels unlucky sometimes :D
To check if something is in reach (of 7 actions) feels restricted and gives me the right feel of mood of being lost and look out for stuff that I need.

I cant really point out what I'm missing here, but if I get a matching pattern its a bit unsatisfying to just 'complete' a task. I'm not sure what you could do instead / differently.

But overall I liked it. Well done!

@koemeterion totally get it. There were 2 things I had in my head. 1 was that each event would change something on the island graphic itself, like if you build a shelter, it'd appear there and give a visual reward. I was pretttty sure I wasn't going to get around to this so it didn't worry me. The other thing I had was a dialogue system where the character/slots would comment on what was going on in the actions. I actually did have that working but in playtests people seemed to mostly ignore that content so I nixed it. Appreciate the feedback!

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