Game Designer, Bryan, and I sat together and made a list of all the different creatures/characters that we thought we would need.  From there I searched the internet for certain creatures that we know have been done a million times (like specific dragons and such) so I made sure I making them look like they should. This way, people can tell what they are.  : ) Or on a lot of the creatures I would just make up my own look from what I thought they might look like.

My favorite thing about Battle Slots was the creative freedom to bring to life dozens of creatures!! I had a blast creating every single one of them because each one was so very different from the last. I really felt that I had the support of everyone involved in Battle Slots at Phantom which made the creatures that much more fun to do!

I can’t say I had many struggles with my Battle Slots experience except maybe towards the end my creative juices had about been drained and my brain hurt. : )

I hope you all really enjoy Battle Slots because it is a very unique game with so many Phantom talents taking part. We tried to do what we do best and made a great gaming experience.  I would love to do more characters and creatures for the world of Tellus, so check it out!

Destructoid “I’ve had an opportunity to play the game itself and it feels promising…I would suggest fans of Puzzle Quest keep their eyes on this one.”

Brutal Gamer “Battle Slots is just a great game. It makes slots more interesting by adding a very well-done rpg element, and it makes the rpg stand out from the crowd with its customizable magic slot machine.”

Goozer Nation “Battle Slots is a blast to play.  The unique element of chance presented by the slot machine really adds a lot to the battles.  And at just $19.99 for PC, it is a steal.”

Examiner “Battle Slots gameplay is addictive, fun, and highly customizable.”

Kotaku “Puzzle Quest will always be my first RPG-hybrid love, but Battle Slots definitely gives it a run for its money.”

VG Revolution “If you like role playing games with unique combat mechanics I would recommend giving BattleSlots a shot.”

About.com “Battle Slots is a highly polished twist on the traditional slot machine game that pays out big in terms of enjoyment, if not originality.”

Keep the reviews coming! Want to let us know what you think of Battle Slots? Leave a review here, on our Facebook, or at any review site of your choosing. We look forward to hearing from you.

3^rd day of spring

There has to be a way to share my love of potatoes with the world!  If only I could think of a way to deliver potatoes to everyone I can see.  I’m going to work on this; I just KNOW people would appreciate it!  They’re delicious, they’re filling, there’s an amazing variety of ways they can be cooked… more later…

9^th day of spring

I think I have an idea.  A long-range delivery system to get potatoes to everyone in a crowd, it’s ingenious.  I’ll need a large supply of potatoes, and I’ll have to craft the parts myself for the mechanism.  There has never been anything like this.  To be honest, I got the idea from watching crossbowmen at target practice.  I’m planting a garden today with nothing but potatoes.  I have plenty of time before harvest to perfect my invention.

18^th day of spring

I don’t have any eyebrows or eyelashes left.  Maybe I should start from the beginning.  I started forging the components of what I am calling the T.A.T.E.R.S. Bow.  T.A.T.E.R.S. stands for Timed Accelerated Torpedoes Emerging Really Speedily.  My plan was to create a mechanism that would launch potatoes at a high enough velocity to deliver them hundreds of yards away.  What I ended up making was a mechanism that exploded the potatoes into a magma-like mess – hence my missing facial hairs.  Back to the drawing board.  Oh, and the potatoes are coming in nicely.

29^th day of spring

Round two of testing went MUCH better!  I’ve changed my concept a bit.  No longer is it called the T.A.T.E.R.S. Bow, it is now called the S.P.U.D.S. Launcher!  S.P.U.D.S. stands for Super Potatoes Urgently Delivered Softly.  I didn’t burn myself or injure myself this time.  But the velocity that the potatoes shot out of the barrel of the launcher caused them to be delivered as mashed potatoes.  Back to the drawing board again!  I’m getting close I know it!  Mmmm…. Mashed potatoes.

1^st day of summer

Still working on the S.P.U.D.S. Launcher, I’ve been able to tweak it down so that the potatoes don’t launch as a mash, but unfortunately they still launch at such a high velocity that they can knock holes in walls.  I even accidentally injured a raccoon that lives near my cabin.  I felt so bad I took him in, and I’m nursing him back to health.  He doesn’t like me much yet, maybe he’s still bitter.  But I’ve given him a name, O’gratin – my favorite way to cook potatoes!

20^th day of summer

O’gratin hates me!  I think he’s still mad at me for shooting him, but he hasn’t left yet.  I think he likes being taken care of and he’s getting fat!  He growls at me if I come too close to him, growls at me if I don’t feed him, growled at me one time when I dumped water on him because he stunk, and he BIT me when I tried to pick him up!  He’s so cute!  If he stays, I’m going to keep him.  Oh, and before I forget, I’ve decided to make my idea into a weapon.  This came about through my constant failure to iterate my design to deliver the potatoes safely.  I’m accepting what is apparently fate and will create a home protection device that uses potatoes.  As long as the owner has a potato garden they will have almost infinite ammo!

1^st day of fall

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  I’ve been busy!  O’gratin likes me now, and he’s discovered that he likes potatoes too.  It’s like we were destined to be together.  We now eat dinner together every evening, and he sleeps in my bed curled around my feet.  He still nips at me when I try to clean him up, but at least he lets me pet him now.  Who knew a raccoon would make a good pet?  I’ve got scars all over from his bites, but it’s totally worth it!  Oh, and I’ve perfected my design!  And it’s harvest season, I’ll be harvesting all my potatoes and plan to take them and my launcher with me on the road.  Bandits beware the S.P.U.D.S. Launcher!  S.P.U.D.S. now stands for Super Projectile Utilizing Devices of Science.  It’s a bit wordy, but it means exactly what I want it to mean!  Mmmm… potatoes!

Fig. 1 – sketch of S.P.U.D.S. Launcher

Okay, enough about that.  I’m sure you’re all chomping at the bit with anticipation to hear some insider information on how Battle Slots went from a silly idea to the shelf at your local retailer.  Right?  Right.  Just how did the idea for Battle Slots come about?  Well let me start by telling you about my ‘normal’ job.  I work at Phantom EFX as a game designer.  Phantom EFX is known for making THE BEST™ slot and casino video games in the world!  On an average day, my job involves coming up with brand new slot machines and bonus rounds for our monthly slot releases and our boxed products (all available on the cheap at our incredible store, and also at your local PC game retailer).  I also design quests and adventures for our Casino MMO called Reel Deal LIVE.  I’m a huge video game addict, playing games on my PC and my Xbox 360 (when it isn’t out for repair) (which happens a lot) (no I’m not joking).

While brainstorming slot ideas here at work, Shurm (another game designer here at Phantom EFX, who also happens to be the CEO) and I have always wanted to come up with a way to use a slot machine in battle against other players or against monsters of some type.  A few slots that we have released used this idea on a limited basis (we have a cool one called Armies of Osiris that features Egyptian gods doing battle), but we’ve never had the time or the manpower to fully flesh out the idea.  And to tell you the truth, the guys who control the pocketbooks kind of thought we were crazy.

Then one day our company had a meeting to decide on a new game that we could release to fit in with a gap in our current development schedule.  Many game ideas were thrown around…everything from Monster Fashion Designer (design your own clothes and outfits for everyone from Bride of Frankenstein to Wolfman) to Mouseville (kind of like Farmville with mice, don’t ask).  I pitched the idea of Battle Slots, and to my surprise almost everyone liked it.  Everyone except Dale, and he got overruled, so HAH Dale, I win.  So I went on my merry way to work on a design document.

The original design that I submitted differed quite a bit from how the end game turned out.  In the original design I had all the spells and attacks linked directly to the symbols in the slot machine.  So if you discover a Fireball symbol and install it in your slot, whenever you spun and hit a payout on that symbol you would cast a fireball on the enemy.  A payout of 3 fireball symbols would be less effective than a payout of 5 fireball symbols.  Well, this went through some preliminary testing, it just wasn’t very fun.   You just sat there and spun the slot and never had to use any strategy or skill in order to defeat the enemy.  It was 100% luck on how your spins turned out, and it got old pretty fast.  Yeah it basically stunk.  Not everyone has a perfect fun idea the first time, don’t make fun.  I cry easily.

So the design was redone to instead use a system of “pools” to build up in order to execute attacks and spells (we call them Techniques).  Winning spins of Magic symbols add points to your Spell meter, and winning spins of Weapon symbols add points to your Attack meter.  Each Technique uses a certain amount of points…so once you win enough points from spinning, you can use a technique.  Some techniques damage the enemy; some make your slot machine more powerful by adding Wilds or increasing payouts.  There are tons of different effects.  So basically you spin to fill up meters, then use those meters to kill the enemy.

This added a whole new level of strategy to the game, where you, the player, had to decide what to use and when.  Do you save up points to try to execute your powerful and damaging attack on the enemy, or do you cast a cheaper spell that allows you to spin your reels twice as fast as they can?  Everyone can play in a different way and find their own ‘best’ Technique layout and use.

We were also continuously surprised during our design and testing periods at how differently the game could be played based on which Techniques you acquired from the enemy during your journeys.  The Techniques that you earn are dropped randomly when battles are won, so one person in the office would have a totally different set of Techniques to use than another, and their strategy would be completely different because of that.  It makes the game fun to play through more than once, to see just how different the game can feel.

A lot of other details of the original design were also changed, added, or removed.  We had a GREAT team of artists, programmers, testers, voice actors and actresses (way to moan and groan Jane Marie), and sound guys (sound guy actually.  Yep, just one.  Adam you rock :]  ), who continually played and tested the game and came up with great ideas to make it even more fun along the way.  All of their ideas meshed in and changed the original design, so in reality everyone that you see on the credits of the game should be listed as a designer.  We had so many cool ideas that when (hopefully!) work on Battle Slots 2 begins, we’ll have no problem making it bigger and better than the original.  In fact, I can guarantee that it will be at LEAST 10% slottier!  So give Battle Slots great review scores so we get the go ahead to make another one!

Thanks so much for reading this and for supporting Battle Slots!  None of us could do the jobs that we love without you supporting us by playing our games!  If you ever stop by Cedar Falls Iowa, I’ll buy you a beverage of your choice.

What did you do then?
The first thing a tester does is just play the game. Unlike all the people who worked on it, I had no idea what was waiting for me when I hit “play”. It turned out, I had a very addictive game on my hands. It was FUN! But I wasn’t there to have fun, I was supposed to work. Work? Well, bother that. I just had fun. There it was. The solution to all my fears. This was a fun game, and I had been asked to find the places where it didn’t work right so they could fix it and make it more fun! This was a great job.
What makes you even remotely qualified to test the game?
I had going for me a long passion for video games, especially Role-Playing Games, and an eclectic (read: unfocused) education. I’d studied, at college level, Biology, Quantum Mechanics, Aerospace Engineering, Graphic Design and Fiction Writing. So I approached issues in a systematic and experimental way. If I spotted an issue as I played, I would repeat the same conditions over and over, changing variables, creating control experiments and adding this mouse click or this technique to pinpoint where the issue was. Let’s use a metaphor. Imagine the game was a car. Let’s say the car broke down. I couldn’t lift the hood and look at the engine. I know nothing about engines. What I could do was tell the mechanic: “The engine rattles and coughs  when I am driving between 30 and 45 miles an hour, uphill, in 65.345 degree weather, on a day ending in Y,” because I had extensively tested all those variables. Sounds boring? It wasn’t. It was actually exciting to come up with the protocols to isolate each condition. Now all I had to do was present this in a way that avoided me getting stabbed by ninjas.

Ok, so what makes you qualified as a proofreader?
My second (or rather first) passion is for writing, which is why role-playing games are my favorite sort of video games. I’m a sucker for a good story. I am an aspiring writer myself, and I started, though for personal reasons did not complete, a Masters in Literature. I have also written somewhere around a quarter of  a million to a million words working on several novel projects. I discovered that this alone didn’t make me a good proofreader. I had the grasp of English to do the job, but I found myself wanting to rewrite entire passages, which is not what proofreading is about. I had to quiet down my writer voice and make corrections and suggestions in a way that preserved Nate’s writerly voice, without substituting it with mine. All writers have a distinctive voice: a way they use sentence structure, a particular set of metaphor, a turn of phrase, a sense of humor, that is unique. I could’ve rewritten the entire game, but then it would’ve been in my voice. It is Nate’s voice, however, that you ought to hear. It is his story, and what a story it is! Heroes! Villains! Monsters! Crazy uncles! An epic struggle to save the world! Crazy artists that need to be saved from themselves! I knew I just had to be faithful to his voice as I worked. To take the car metaphor from before, it was like restoring a classic car by buffing out the rust without damaging its original lines. Also, I wanted to avoid getting stabbed by an angry writer. And ninjas.

So how did you avoid stabbings?
One of the main skill art students learn is not, actually, art, but how to “critique” art. Think of it as constructive criticism. Rather than “this painting sucks” it is a lot more useful to say “the use of color is interesting but I have some doubts about the issue of figure-ground relationship where…” blah blah blah. Not only is the first example not going to help the artist, it’s also going to get you stabbed with a paintbrush… and not with the soft end. If you always wondered about all those high-faluting, fancy-shmancy word-things art critics use, think of it this way: which of the following sentences would result in you punching the person who said it: “You suck a lot,” or “you appear to display a spectacularly high aspiration coefficient.”? Answer: the first one. You’d have fallen asleep by the time he was finished with the second one. And that is how art critics avoid stabbings: through the power of boredom.

Zzzzz*sknrt* huh, what, where am I?

What made testing this game a great experience, in the end, is all due to the great people who imagined, planned, programmed, designed and crafted Battle Slots RPG. There are too many wonderful little details to list that make this a rich experience, and anyway everyone would (should) find and focus on different details. It’s deep, it’s fun, it’s endlessly addictive. It was great fun to work on it, and I’ll keep playing it long after my work on it is done. I hope my small contributions were helpful in making it a better experience for people who don’t enjoy finding all the little broken parts and drawing up experimental tables to track the problem down… which I suspect is everybody else.

Why is a ninja creeping up behind you?
Help they’re all mad you’ve got to get me out of

We apologize, but due to technical issues the transmission has been interrupted. You will enjoy BATTLE SLOTS RPG. Our ninja squads are standing by.

What are people saying?

“Now I’ve had an opportunity to play the game itself and it feels promising.” – Conrad Zimmerman, Destructoid

“I’m not sure about you, but I am legitimately excited for Battle Slots RPG, Phantom EFX’s upcoming PSN title. I’ve sunk dozens of hours into Puzzle Quest and I’m getting a PQ vibe when looking at the screenshots.” – Eric G, PSN Stores

“Ask not for whom the reels of fate spin, they spin for thee. Or something. That’s my attempt at sounding learned to tell you that the Battle Slots demo is now out. I am very excited for this game.” – Brandon Cackowski-Schnell, No High Scores

Not sure about Battle Slots?

Download the free demo of the game and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter today!

Hi! My name is Kent Stowe and I was the lead Artist/Animator on Battle Slots RPG. I was responsible for most of the game’s main interface and layout, and for the technique effects and animations in Battle Slots. If it blows up, glows, or flies across the screen, I probably made it. It was a tremendously fun and challenging project and I’m very proud of the finished game. Why? Because Battle Slots is FUN! As a game developer, that’s always the main goal, make something fun! Well, that’s exactly what we did.

With Battle Slots we knew that the volatility of a slot machine would change some of the old rules of traditional RPGs. The question was, what fun benefits would a slot machine bring to a traditional RPG system? Here is one example of how Battle Slots RPG flips the script on role playing game theory and brings something new to the table:

-Hypothetical Senario-

So I’m playing an RPG and I have a cool new Spell, but I can’t use it until I reach level 5, and my character is only level 4. Obviously it’s time to kill some monsters and grind up a level. In a typical RPG I’d think to myself, “OK self, I need 100 more XP (Experience Points) to hit my level, I’m in the skeleton cave, and each skeleton I kill gives me 10 XP. Do some quick mental math… So I guess I’ll kill 10 of these in a row and then I’ll get my next level… Must be why they call it grinding…”

OK stop right there… that’s not fun, it’s boring!

In Battle Slots, the XP I earn isn’t some rigid number like 10 XP per skeleton. The reels of the slot machine determine the XP award. If I hit a big XP payout during the battle, I may get that 100 XP in just one spin! The enemies also spin their own Magic Slot Machine, and any XP or Money they make during the battle is mine to keep too, so long as I win! That means if the Skeleton hits an XP jackpot in battle and I kill it, that XP is mine too!

That volatility is so much more fun! Any spin could be a jackpot, so you always want to give it “just one more spin!” Then it’s 2:00 am…

Now take it one step further with the ability to decide whether you want 3 XP symbols 3 Money Symbols or a Mixture as part of your symbol set. Really want that new technique in the store? Switch your slot to have no XP symbols, just Money, and rake in the cash. Or vice versa. Need a level but have tons of cash? Go all-XP. Want some of each? Set
it with a mixture. The point is, you can customize the machine to the needs at hand, as the situation changes.

That’s just one example, and I could go on all day, but I don’t need to… As I write this, the Demo version of Battle Slots is upon us. I encourage anybody who likes Role Playing Games, Slot Machines, Casual games like Puzzle Quest, or video games in general to try it out and see how well this crazy mash-up works. If you like the Demo you’ll be able to continue right where you left off when the game releases.

So enough talking, get the Demo and see for yourself. Battle Slots is FUN!

This tax was really just a form of “protection”.  As long as the other states and nations paid their dues, they would not incur the wrath of the wealthy aristocracy’s armies.  This did cause some bitterness among the rulers of the smaller nations and states.  But it allowed them to live in relative peace and quiet without being troubled by the richest nobles.

Should a state or nation stop paying taxes, they would be sent a stern message.  This message was backed by 500 of the fiercest warriors of the Rich Lands.  Should the taxes still not be paid, the warriors would ravage the countryside and essentially bring the local economy to its knees.

As far as the nobles of the Rich Lands were concerned, it was their right to be paid the taxes.  They created the laws and upheld the peace.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  As long as the taxes were paid, the separate states and nations never saw soldiers or any writs.

This ultimately led the other nations and states to form their own economies and local laws.  There have been minor skirmishes amongst them, however nothing of consequence that would bring the attention of the aristocracy.

The final benefit of the aristocracy being separated from the other nations by the Lightning Sea and the River Crystalis is that it opened up an opportunity for trade between the other nations and the Rich Lands.  Much wealth was poured into the separate states and nations, which fueled their local economies and allowed them to remain autonomous.  This autonomy has led to a rift being opened between the aristocracy and the other states and nations.  Should the lesser nations and states join forces, a coup could be had.

All it takes is for one spark to hit the right hay stack, and the lesser nations could rise together and topple the aristocracy.  Fortunately, nobody wants that much responsibility.

Claw Slash – Slashes its enemy with its powerful claws.  Damage: 22

Crush – Crushes its enemy beneath its monstrous bulk.  Damage: 50

Fire Breath – Breathes an all-consuming fire upon its enemy.  Damage: 65

Wildfire – Razes a random reel, turning it completely Wild for the next 3 spins.

Flame Wilds – Burns 3 Wilds onto each reel for the next 8 spins.