Strange Slot Simulator Review: Everyday I'm Shuffling
Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassel.
I'm Mike Delisio.
Today we're taking a look at a game called Strange Slot Simulator. And there is the occasional time where I see a game and I instantly want to play it. And this is one of those.
Yes,
I don't ever want to play slot machines. I feel like they are I mean they're very attractive and I want to play them I guess but I won't because you lose money on them. They're bad
for but they're flashing colorful and a board game based on them or card game.
Sounds fascinating.
It does. I was also very interested just from the theme and then when I found out that it was a deduction game, I was even more interested.
Yeah. So Mike's going to tell you how it plays and we'll be back. Okay, here we see a lot of the components for Strange Slot Simulator. The first thing that you kind of have to do is set up the six slot machines. Slot machines are made up of 20 different cards, and it tells you this on your player screen. And they're all going to have a different distribution of the different types of symbol cards that make them up. So, you kind of set up all of these decks of 20 cards. They're going to be shuffled and they're going to be placed in the center of the table. Then everyone's going to get a chance with everyone else's eyes closed to switch up the arrangement of those decks so that no one knows where they are. And then everyone after everyone's had a chance to do that, you're going to place these little uh signposts or I think they're maybe called index cards on top of them that are just basically a way to differentiate each of the decks after they've all been shuffled up. These are actually the signboard cards from one to six. Those are just put off to the side of your play area and everyone is dealt out one card from this lottery card.
This is essentially going to be determining uh who's kind of choosing first when you're choosing slot machines. So, Strange Slot Simulator is a deduction style game with some real time elements involved. What you're trying to do is over the course of four rounds figure out which deck is which and write it down on your player sheet here. Now, it comes with a whole bunch of player sheets, but uh one thing you can do, which we did here at the dice tower, is we laminated them and took a dry erase marker to make it easier so you're not having to deal with uh the the sheets. How you actually do your recordkeeping for the deduction is up to you, but they do make some suggestions and it's kind of what I've gone with. First of all, I'll just throw my name down there. Why not? This is showing you the four rounds in the game. And I'm just going to do this. I'm going to write one, two, three, four, five, and six. And what I want to do at the end of four rounds is be able to determine which of these are which of these based upon cards that I'm looking at and knowing what the distribution of each of the cards in each of the decks are. So each round goes in a particular flow that starts with reserving a machine.
That's the first phase. Then is the spin phase which is the real time portion of the game and where you're going to be doing most of your uh work to try to deduct. And then the analysis phase is where you're going to have uh one minute in rounds 1, 2, and three, and two mount two minutes in the second uh last round, sorry, to be able to kind of look at what you have uh notated and try to make a hopefully educated guess on which machine is which in the first round. Whoever uh selects first is going to be determined by the lottery uh card number. So maybe let's say that A and B had been chosen by other players. comes to me. I'm third. I can choose any of these. Let's say I went ahead and I chose D. Whichever one you choose, you're going to go ahead and place this in front of your player screen. So, normally, you know, I'd be doing this type of a thing. And I put that in front of there. And then you're going to once everyone has done that, everyone has claimed one, then you're going to uh whoever was the last player to pick one is going to be the timekeeper for that round. You'll probably use your phone as a way to uh track four minutes. And then what you're going to do is you're going to start the spin phase. Okay? And this is the part that happens once the timer goes. What you're going to do is you're going to turn over the top three cards of your slot machine. And then you're going to mark down which is which. So right now, actually, I should not have done one, two, three, four, five, six.
I should have done A B CDE E F. So, I'll correct my mistake right now. A B C D E F because all I know right now is that I've got slot machine D. I don't know which one it is. Okay. So, now let's say the timer starts. Go. One. I'm flipping over these cards. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna mark off the symbols under that particular area on slot machine D. So, I've got two watermelons and a cherry. Okay. Then what you're supposed to do, and they said not to go too crazy with this, is you just shuffle these back. Put these back into your deck. Anyway, you shuffle it three times or thereabouts. You're just not trying to cheat. And then you're going to flip over the next three. In this case, I've got two grapes and a moon. Okay. Within the decks, there are going to be what are known as bonus cards. Now, I would not be able to do this throughout the game, but I do want to show you any of the bells. And there are three different types. Let me see if this one has a regular bell. I don't know if it does, which would be huge. Oh, here we go. All right. These three cards are known as bonus cards. They all have a corresponding space where you would check them off on your board. But also, every time one of these cards go come up, you're going to be marking off lines on the bonus tracker here at the bottom.
So along the bottom of your board, you've got this bonus tracker, and you can kind of see that there. Every fifth one is going to unlock a bonus uh star. So, as you're marking those along, in addition to marking them off on your different areas here, you're going to be marking these off. Once you uh have one or more of these stars, you could choose to spend one. And what that would do is uh instead of drawing the top three cards, you would drop five card or you'd flip five cards. Okay, so that's your bonuses. You get an extra two to look at during that particular flop of the cards. You're going to continue to do this throughout the game, accumulating bonus stars and then spending them when you feel uh fit. If you ever get to the 30th star, now you basically have this lucky status for the rest of the game, which means that for the rest of the game, you're drawing one extra card when you do your flip. So instead of flipping three cards, you're flipping four. The other thing that you can do during the spin phase, which is the 4-minute timed phase, is after you've completed a flip and you decided to mark off, you can swap it with one that's left in the center. Um, so let's say that I chose to do that and the the C was still out there. I would put the D back. You have to be very careful you keep track of uh which one is which.
Then I would put this C in front of me. And now I start collecting data for that one by flipping over the cards and marking those down. Couple of suns and a watermelon bell. That would give me a bonus. Boom. Boom. Boom. Okay. At the end of the round, what's going to happen is that you are going to get a minute to kind of evaluate that. And what you're doing is you're looking at the data you've collected and comparing it to the different machines that are here on your player screen. So, you know what the distribution of all of the different symbols are within your decks. And you're going to use that information to try to deduce which machine is which. So that at the end of four rounds, you've got a whole bunch of marks hopefully on there and you're saying, "Okay, I think based upon what I've seen that A is uh the the third the third slot machine." And so you write that. You can even write the same number in two different ones. Let's say you weren't sure. I think it's either A or B. Um and then I think this is the two. I think you know this is the four.
This is the five and this is the six. I mean, that's very unlikely, but you get the idea. You're just writing those down. Once you have written an answer in each of your six machines, you'll take the lowest of these sign cards left and put it in front of you. This is going to be a way to uh deal with tie breakers if you have some. Because basically after everyone has t taken a sign board and all of the uh deduction has gone on, you're going to then evaluate each of the dete of the decks to determine which one is right uh which one is which. And then you're going to count how many you got right and you'll write that down here. Let's say I got four out of six. If another player got four out of six and that was the most, I would break the tie because I have the lowest sign card. Okay, that's the basic version of the game. There are all different kinds of variants that are in the game. You have an easier mode, some expert modes, uh booster modes, you've got a co-op version, you've got a solo version, things along those lines. But that's the general idea be behind Strange Slot Simulator. Let's head back up and let you know our thoughts.
Most people who review this game are probably going to be like, "It's accurately named."
It really is.
It's It's It's amazing to me, frankly, honestly, how many rules I think the rule book is overwritten.
It is.
It just keeps going on and on about how to shuffle um and how to do this and that. It's not It makes the game seem way more complex than it is. But it is strange.
Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. Like, yeah, the the basic game is it's very simple. And you're right, the rule book doesn't do a great job. And and to be fair, this is coming from Hobby Japan. And and so uh I'm not sure how the translation was handled, but um it's almost too simple in a way. It's like all you're really doing is choosing one of six decks of cards and in a 4minute time span flipping over three at a time usually and just marking things off on your sheet. It's but and it's weird. It is weird. Yeah. So, first of all, I should mention some Dominion is one of the greatest deck building games of all time, but I know some people who don't like it, right?
Because every after you play two hands, you shuffle. Then after you play three hands, you shuffle. And after a while, you're shuffling less, but you still shuffle a lot over the course of the game.
If you don't like shuffling,
you're out.
That's that's all you're doing in this game. And it's actually problematic because the game again has a whole paragraph in the rules about don't cheat when you shuffle. You need to shuffle at least two times. And it's such a pain because if I can shuffle faster than Mike, I have an advantage.
Yeah. You're seeing more cards.
Or if I just don't shuffle, if I shuffle worse than Mike, I have an advantage,
right?
And that's such a weird mechanism. I get why they're doing it, but it also
it's not quite deduction.
It's noticing patterns.
Yes.
And the patterns could be wrong. Let's say I draw three cards and there's two grapes.
Mhm.
And then I shuffle. I draw. There's two grapes. I shuffle. I draw. I'm like, this is one of the decks that must have six grapes. Tons of grapes. Yeah.
But it could have just three.
And I shuffled. Now, statistically, it shouldn't.
And there are the cards that there's only one of or two of. And if you draw two of those in the same hand,
you can narrow some out.
Oh my word. But that's luck.
It is luck.
And it's weird that way. I mean, I think it's a fascinating
exercise. How's that?
Yeah. I think this is a really interesting idea. And I I even describing it, I'm like, that's it sounds good. It does. And while I was playing it, I was enjoying it. But then after the first game I played of it, I was like, do I want to play this again right away? Because it's quick, right? It's a fast game. And the answer was no because I didn't want to have to go through the whole process of setting it up, which is a chore. And the shuffling, shuffling, shuffling again. And also the second game would be exactly like the first game. You know what? Unfortunately, this game would be much better if it was a bag chit pulling game
or an app
I pull I mean they would get destroyed.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But I'd pull three chips from bag to throw them back in,
shake it, pull them and you don't have to worry about that.
The shuffling does affect it and it's a pain to set up. Now technically you can keep the decks together.
Um
and it's so the funny thing is this sounds all negative.
Yeah. But at the same time when I'm playing it, I'm like I actually stopped writing down this stuff because a lot of it I I guess you can write down every combination and at the end look at it.
That's what I did
and just use
that's what I've done.
Thank I was more like get as many bonuses so I can do the four card hands and hope in one of these or five card hands and hope in one of these five card hands I draw. Yeah. And then you can start eliminating stuff. And if I figure out one deck,
then I get another elimination. I almost can immediately figure out the second deck.
Yeah,
it's
But again, it's
I could just never draw anything useful. There was some games I played where I draw like six turns in a row. I would draw three different symbols. Unhelpful.
You know what's interesting about this? I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned at the beginning kind of the dangers of of uh slot machines. I lived in Las Vegas for a little while, not as long as Chris, but um one thing it does simulate very well is that it you get into this very satisfying loop of flip flip flip flip flip flip flip.
There's no sound effects.
It's like and it's I think that phase is called pull. It does kind of give you this feeling of you just get into this kind of like almost addictive thing of I I should be switching out decks, but I want to just keep flipping cards. You know what I mean? So, it's weird. Like, it's a very odd idea. I applaud the odd idea. It works in in what it's trying to do, but I I I just come down to I can't quite recommend it. But I I don't hate the game. I just think that there's too many issues for me to to give it a blanket recommendation. Yeah. I can't that that's the thing. My rating for this, after I thought about it, was pretty easy. It's a six. And what I mean by that is I enjoyed playing it. I'll probably never play it again and I cannot recommend you buy it because I think for most people
it will be the same and with the factor in where I enjoyed it but I was done when I was finished
there's going to be a lot of people who are not going to enjoy it. I definitely played with people who hated it.
Yes.
You know because they don't either don't like shuffling or the logic was it just again it's not logic it's statistical analysis. That's what it is.
That's really what it is. You were looking at a spread. It's like
predicting the weather.
Mhm.
There's a lot of suns in this deck. I I saw so that probably has two
probably.
Maybe.
Yeah.
It's going to rain today.
Mhm.
I think.
Yeah.
So, I'm amused by this. And if this designer
does party tarot, that's a odd name. Yeah.
If they do another thing, I'm I'm all on board. Mhm.
But this is the kind of game I think that I would I would have played in a prototype and been like, "I'm glad you showed it to me. Don't publish it."
Yeah. And you know, my thing is I'm also at a six, but I would play it again. Um, but now I'm just annoyed that it's not a bag building game because I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that would solve all almost all of those issues, right?"
It really would, right?
It really would. I think I think I would play it more if it was a baguer. I really someone out there now is going to start making, you know, they're going to make a custom bag.
You could do it. You could do it. But yeah, unfortunately, it's just too many things against it for me to to recommend it, but there I have a weird kind of uh soft spot in my heart, even though I can't recommend it.
Yeah. Well, there you go, folks. That's Strange Slot Simulator. One of the most unique games I played in a long time.
Mhm.
I'm Tom.
I'm Mike.
We'll catch you next time at the casino. Kidding. I won't be there.
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