The gushing spring of free video games often known as Ludum Dare has as soon as once more spittled forth a small treasure. Pick it up, rub the muck off, it’s Roulette Knight, an RPG about taking part in round after round of Russian roulette. There’s no journey from one finish of the dominion to a different, no evil lord to conquer – that stuff’s for SQUIRES. Here, you simply sit in a room, slip bullets right into a revolver, and pull the set off for money rewards and XP. It’s brief, foolish and fills you up with giddy stress.
The deadliness of a bullet has been nerfed considerably, nonetheless, and it takes two unfortunate rounds to complete off this tenacious bloke-at-arms. At least at first. The RPG half quickly turns into clear. After a couple of successive empty clicks of the hammer, you degree up. With cash earned you should purchase health-giving trinkets or protecting buckets to place in your head (and the extra bullets you play with, the better the rewards). You additionally make your manner up the ability tree with XP, giving your knight armour plating or the prospect to regenerate well being with every clean shot. Other abilities embrace the prospect of a misfire, or a bonus that doubles your winnings for the following shot.
The store objects additionally rotate. Bigger weapons with extra chambers grow to be accessible, otherwise you would possibly see a Holy Grail that reinforces all kinds of stats. A map additionally charts your progress, difficult you to extend the harm from every bullet, or including further chambers one after the other. Although when your revolver will increase in measurement, the minimal variety of bullets you need to jam into the loss of life wheel goes up. The complete factor is only a finely trimmed tree of numbers and odds, blossoming with bullet flowers.
It was created by FourQuarters Team for the 41st incarnation of the Ludum Dare game jam, below the theme “Combine two incompatible genres”. And what as soon as appeared incompatible now appears very appropriate. But I suppose you may put a ability tree and a playing mechanic into something and it’ll work. The staff have tried to keep away from a number of the inherent darkness of this explicit subject by together with a ‘game over’ picture of a nurse patching up your head, as if two bullets coursing by way of your bonce was solely as debilitating as a grazed knee. But this doesn’t scale back the gambler’s stress in these necessary moments, when your subsequent shot may imply a brand new goodie from the store or prompt loss of life.
You can play it for free here.
