Just one more spin and this time you’re definitely going to win. You’ll pay off what you owe, walk away from the machine, and never make this deadly mistake again. At least, that’s the plan in Lucky Break, a roguelike deckbuilder from solo developer Ian Durra that launches on Steam today.
You’re deep in debt to the mob, already a little drunk, and stuck in a dive bar with a cursed slot machine that may be your only way out. Win enough money and you could finally settle your debts. Fail, and the people waiting to collect aren’t exactly known for their patience.
Just One More Spin
The slot machine is at the center of Lucky Break, but this isn’t simply a case of pulling the lever and hoping three cherries turn up.
After every spin, you’ll get the chance to choose new symbols to add to the machine, gradually changing what’s sitting on those reels and improving your chances of putting together something worthwhile. It’s the deckbuilding part of the equation, only your carefully assembled deck has been replaced by a gambling machine that you’re increasingly desperate to beat.
Jackpots are obviously good news. A useless spin when you’ve got mobsters breathing down your neck isn’t what you need, and those mobsters aren’t hanging around the bar for the atmosphere. You’ve got debts to repay, and failing to come up with the money can have some fairly permanent consequences. Lucky Break isn’t especially subtle about what’s at stake either. Don’t pay what you owe and you could start losing fingers.
Drinking Might Actually Improve Your Chances
Normally, getting progressively drunker while trying to gamble your way out of serious debt would be a pretty terrible strategy. Here, it might actually help.
Drinks can be purchased during a run and used to stack the odds in your favor, giving you another way to interfere with a machine that would otherwise be largely governed by chance. Between adding symbols and making use of whatever you’ve been drinking, the idea is to gradually drag the odds a little further onto your side.
Of course, Lucky Break is still a roguelike built around gambling. There’s only so much control you’re ever going to have. That tension between manipulating the machine and still having to live with whatever it spits back out seems to be a big part of the appeal. You can build toward better results, but sooner or later you’ve still got to spin.
There’s Something Wrong With This Bar
If the cursed slot machine and finger-removing mobsters hadn’t already given it away, Lucky Break isn’t aiming for the bright lights and celebratory jingles of your average casino. Horror is baked into the whole setup.
You’re trapped in a grimy dive bar, surrounded by some thoroughly unpleasant people, feeding money into a machine while trying to dig yourself out of the hole that brought you there in the first place. Addiction isn’t just window dressing for the deckbuilding mechanics either; it’s central to the game’s story and the increasingly desperate situation you’re trying to escape.
Making it through a run can lead to multiple endings, so there’s more waiting at the end than a final score and another excuse to pull the lever. Whether any of those endings involve calmly settling the tab and going home for an early night remains to be seen.
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Feeling Lucky?
Lucky Break is a single-player roguelike deckbuilder that takes the familiar process of slowly stacking the odds in your favor and drops it somewhere far nastier than the usual card table.
There’s something fitting about turning the “one more run” mentality of roguelikes into a game about someone who genuinely cannot stop gambling. Every spin may be the one that finally sorts everything out, which is presumably exactly what got our unfortunate gambler into this mess in the first place.
Still, what’s one more spin?