The demo of Slots & Daggers is now available, and it is glorious

Friedemann is an indie developer I’ve been watching for a while. I spent hours absorbed in his Summerhouse, building glorious pixelated scenes from the tiles on hand. When he announced the follow-up to this cozy sensation, Slots & Daggers, it couldn’t have been further from what I was expecting, but oh boy, did I get excited. 

Whereas Summerhouse is filled with bright colors, soft lighting, and sandbox building, Slots & Daggers goes down a wholly different route – the direction of the roguelike. It’s dark, grungy, utterly mechanical, and an absolute pleasure to play on every level. The demo was released today, and it’s an absolute must-play for any fan of the roguelike genre.

You spin me right round, baby

The premise of Slots & Daggers is simple. You have a slot machine that, at least initially, has three different symbols across the three wheels: Coin, attack, and defend – all pretty self-explanatory – and you manually stop each dial to decide what actions you’re going to take toward a selection of enemies who gradually get stronger and more vicious. 

As you defeat enemies, any coins you’ve earned can then be used to buy power-ups, making you stronger against any enemies that follow. The success of each run is dictated by the symbols you land on and the power-ups you choose to buy after each round. 

Each enemy defeated rewards a certain number of chips that can be used to purchase modifiers that affect the game as a whole, outside of the individual power-ups that affect each round. Between the power-ups and the modifiers, it’s everything you’d expect from a roguelike, but there’s something incredibly special and more than a little addictive about it.

Find the rhythm

One of my favorite things about Slots & Daggers is the rhythm that you can find in the simple act of stopping the dials from their otherwise eternal spins. If you get your timing just right, you can rack up some critical hits and deal huge amounts of damage, hoard piles of coins, or pile on your shields and make yourself damn near unkillable. 

There’s a pattern to the symbols, and when there are only three symbols at play, the rhythm is pretty easy to find. It feels insanely satisfying when you get those clicks timed perfectly, and the machine explodes in a shower of coins into the tray, or the enemy’s health rapidly decreases. 

Some of the attacks you unlock later involve a skill check, which is another thing dictated by timing. There’s a bar that appears alongside a button under the symbol; the bar fills and then empties to a certain beat, and clicking the button when the bar is filled to the top is a guaranteed critical and brutal hit to the enemy.

Dark, dank, and so pretty

If you played Summerhouse, you’ll know what I mean when I say that Friedemann has gone a completely different direction with the colors and themes on display in Slots & Daggers, and he has done it gloriously well. The color scheme consists of reds, browns, greens, and yellows – all muted, providing an almost vintage, grunge aesthetic. It sounds bizarre, I know, but that color scheme looks like war. 

The enemies range from cute to abominable, starting with the weirdly adorable Eggo and progressing through insect-legged weirdos who hit incredibly hard. My current experience with the demo has only extended to the Queen of Snakes, who consistently manages to best me. But, as with any roguelike, each round takes me closer to getting the better of her, so I’m on my way. 

The Slots & Daggers demo is available to download and play right now through Steam.