About This Demo

YOUR WEAPON IS A SLOT MACHINE

Slots & Skulls is a turn-based roguelite. Your weapon is a slot machine, and you load it yourself. Blades, spells, poisons, thorns, gold engines. Spin the wheels, then stop them one press at a time. Whatever lands is what you swing this turn.

BUILD THE MACHINE

112 symbols (in full game), from common steel to seven legendaries. Some just hit. Some hit harder the lower your health, the fuller your shield, the more gold in your purse, the more poison already rotting in the enemy. Some copy their neighbour, some spend your blood, some payx you gold instead of damage. A few demand a skill check, and a perfect catch pays full power.

Between fights the shop opens. Buy symbols and powerups, reroll the board, lock the one you cannot afford yet so it survives into the next shop, or thin the machine by removing a symbol you have outgrown. A radar chart shows exactly what a purchase does to your attack, defense, gold, pool size and kill speed before you spend a coin.

Six active power-ups sit on the d-pad, one per direction, ready in the middle of a spin. Eight passives ride along quietly. Earn a fourth and a fifth wheel and the machine gets wider.

DESCEND

Ten handcrafted levels, five fights each, 33 (in full game) hand animated enemies. Armor eats your steel, but magic goes straight through it. Archers stun your next spin. Ice mages freeze a wheel solid until you thaw it. Fire keeps burning in real time while you sit there deciding. Thieves lift gold out of your purse mid fight. Some slots hold two enemies at once.

Behind the last one waits a final boss who has been robbing you the whole way down. Clear a level and the run rolls straight into the next one with everything you own. Turn up the HEAT to replay a level you already beat as a harder remix, for richer loot.

OPEN THE BOX

Kills drop boxes. Every box holds exactly one prize: a symbol or a gem. Boxes come in tiers, the deeper levels drop better ones, and the odds are printed on the level select screen before you commit to the descent. Opening one turns the whole screen into a whirlpool of symbols that spins down onto whatever you actually won.

THE ANVIL FORGIVES NOTHING

Every kill pays SKULLS, and you keep them when you die. Spend them at the Anvil to hammer a symbol from +0 toward +10 (in full game, there is +5 cap in demo). Every number on that symbol grows with it, the odds get worse with every step, and a failed strike destroys the symbol forever.

Three gems bend the ritual. Green improves the odds. Blue turns a failure into a demotion instead of a funeral. Yellow guarantees the strike. Smelt the spares you do not need back into skulls, read the percentage, and decide exactly how much you are willing to lose. Burn one anyway and the forge owes you a little of it back on your next attempt.

SIGN THE TERMS

Before a run starts you may take a cat, and a cat comes with a pact for the entire descent. Pillow turns your purse into a bank and lets every enemy pick your pocket. Biber hands you 75% more damage and takes 40% of your health. Severus makes every symbol act as if it were +2 and charges you blood on every spin. The cat you took walks the fight stage with you.

You may also take one ability, a single move you get once per fight. Hold a wheel and respin the rest. Turn a wheel wild. Skip this spin to make the next one worth double. Make a landed symbol act a second time. Nudge a wheel one step so the symbol above drops into the row. Reflect the enemy's next attack straight back at it.

NOTHING IS WASTED

21 permanent modifiers wait between runs: thicker skin, sharper edges, a wider skill check window, a second life, more wheels. Every symbol that ever dropped for you is yours forever, and so is every skull you carried out. A run that ends badly still buys the run that ends well.