Strange Slot Simulator. How to Play. Complete, Clear, Concise Board Game Tutorial
Transcript
Race against the clock to draw, shuffle, and deduce the right slot machine combination in Strange Slot Simulator.
And today, we'll be teaching you how to play Strange Slot Simulator, game designed by Party Taro and published by Hobby Japan.
And hey everyone, it's Stella.
And Tarrant, welcome to Meeple University.
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In Strange Slot Simulator, you have found yourself trapped in the cursed casino. Standing between you and escape are six slot machines, each with different settings. Some have more suns. Some have more moons. Others have more watermelons or grapes and so on. To escape, you must work out which slot machine deck matches each setting. And the only way to do that is to play the slots over and over, looking for patterns and frequencies which might reveal the secrets. After four timed rounds of play, you'll compare your results against the possible settings for the slot machines, and whoever can correctly identify the most settings will be the winner.
First, we'll show you how to set up for and play the standard mode of the game. When you initially open your game, you'll have nine different types of cards. Each of them multiple copies of the same card. These are bonus, grapes, cherries, bonus cherries, watermelon, bonus watermelon, sun, moon, and bug. You can return the bugs to the box. They're not used in the standard game. Next, using the table on the back of the rulebook, you'll prepare six 20-card decks known as settings. For example, to prepare setting one, take one bonus card, six grapes cards, four cherries, one cherry bonus, three watermelons, two watermelon bonuses, two suns and a moon.
And then shuffle them all into a single face-down deck. Repeat this process for all six settings and you can return any leftover cards to the box. You now have your six configured setting decks, each of which looks the same from the back. Now, to set up your game session, each of these six setting decks must be assigned one of the signpost letters from A to F randomly so that no player knows which setting number corresponds to which signpost letter. The best way to do this is have all players close their eyes and then in clockwise order, each player opens their eyes and makes as many rearrangements of the decks as they wish.
Once everyone's had their turn to jumble, everyone opens their eyes and you can assign one signpost to each deck. Now, this is important. From this point forward until the end of the game, never separate a deck from its signpost. The decks all look the same and if the signposts get jumbled up, there'll be no way of putting them back where they belong and this will make it possible to correctly deduce the answers and complete the game. So, always remember, each player should only handle one deck at a time and should always take the signpost with the deck and must always return the signpost with that same deck when they put the deck back.
Now, give each player a player screen, a deduction sheet, and a pencil. Shuffle the black-backed lottery cards and deal one face up to each player. This will stay with you throughout the game and breaks ties for turn order. One player at the table will need a phone or countdown timer with an alarm. You're now ready to play.
So, that's the setup. Now, it's time to analyze these slot machines and try to escape the casino.
Strange Slot Simulator plays over a total of four rounds, and each round plays in three phases. These are the reserve a machine phase, the spin phase, and the analysis phase. First is reserve a machine. In the first round, players take one turn each in order from lowest lottery number to highest to choose any one of the six machines, taking the deck and its signboard, and placing the deck behind their screen, and the signboard nearby but visible. Mark the signboard letter in one of the grids on your sheet. Once all players have chosen, any unchosen slot machines remain in the center of the table.
Once everyone is ready, it's time for the spin phase. This phase is played in real time and lasts 4 minutes. So, someone should set up a 4-minute timer, and as soon as they hit start, the spin phase is on. In the spin phase, you'll do as much as you can within the 4 minutes, and most of what you'll do is called pulling the lever. That is spinning your chosen slot machine to gain information about what cards are in the deck. When you pull the lever, go through these steps. Firstly, flip the top three cards from the deck up in front of yourself and behind your screen. On the matching grid, mark down the symbols you drew.
So, here it's a watermelon, a watermelon bonus, and a moon. Additionally, for each bonus symbol that you drew, and this can be a bell with watermelon, bell with cherries, or empty bell, mark the next chip left to right on your bonus track. Finish by shuffling your drawn cards back into the deck. In most cases, you'll then pull the lever again, repeating the process over and over until you think you've gathered enough information to determine which setting corresponds to this machine. There's a few important things to note. Firstly, the shuffling of the cards back into your deck is important. It's necessary that you have a randomized draw of cards each time, so that you don't know whether you're seeing the same card multiple times or not.
However, you're playing the game in real time, and the more times you draw cards, the more information you get. Meaning that ideally you spend as little time shuffling as you can. To make the game as fair as possible, it's recommended that you and the other players all discuss and agree at the start of the game what is the acceptable standard and length of shuffling between draws. You can make the marks on your grid in whatever way you wish. You're not limited to just putting single checks in the boxes like I've shown here. Taking note of double or triple draws can be particularly useful for your deduction. For example, here I know I've drawn two bonuses at once, and marking it like this means I know that later I can come back and rule out a setting which only has one bonus in the deck.
For every five marks you make in the bonus track, you unlock a bonus draw. And before any future draw in the game, you can call out bonus, cross off the bonus star you've unlocked, and draw an additional two cards on this draw. This can give you some extra information more quickly, or particularly help you get some useful information about the doubles or triples in this deck. Later in the game, once you cross off the 30th step on the bonus track, call out lucky, and from this point forward you get one extra card draw on every single future spin. You can even pair the lucky upgrade with a once-off bonus draw to draw six cards at once.
The other option in the spin phase is to swap your reserve machine. After shuffling from your last spin, return the deck and the sideboard to the center of the table, and then choose one of the other available decks. As before, you keep the deck behind your screen, and make sure the other players can see which deck you have. You can now start pulling the lever on your new machine. Just remember to start making your marks in the new correct box of your grid.
The spin phase lasts for a total of 4 minutes.
And as soon as the alarm goes off, it's pencils down and the end of the phase. Players reshuffle and return their current reserved machines to the center of the table. Now, move to the analysis phase. Set and start a 1-minute timer. And during this time, players look at all the marks they've made and compare them with the information on their player screens to see if they have an idea of which settings correspond to which slot machines or perhaps the scheme on which slot machines they want to reserve and investigate further. If you do think you've worked out which setting corresponds to which grid, write the setting number in the key.
When the time runs out,
it's time to proceed to the next round.
From the second round onwards, the reserve a machine phase is resolved not in lottery card order, but in order from who has ticked off the most boxes on their bonus track to whoever has ticked off the fewest. Only if tied do you then revert to the lottery cards, again from lowest number to highest. Complete the second, third, and fourth rounds following the same rules, except the final round's analysis phase lasts 2 minutes instead of 1. At any stage, whether it be during a spin or analysis phase, if you have finished your deduction and made a guess for all six slot machines, you may declare that you're finished even if there's time remaining.
Find the signboards with the numbers and take the lowest numbered board, signifying your order of completion. Once everyone is done or time is up, it's time to check the answers. The simplest way to do this is to hunt through each deck to find all of its bonus cards, since this combination of cards is unique for each of the six settings. Having identified the setting, mark each player's answer as right or wrong. Mark each player's final score out of six, and highest score wins. If tied, whoever finished earlier breaks the tie. You can play Strange Slot Simulator over and over using the same six machine settings. The game is fully replayable.
But there are several variants or changes to the settings you can try.
You can play the easy mode. When setting up the six decks originally, remove all of the watermelon bonuses and all of the cherry bonuses as well as one moon and one sun from each deck. You'll be left with six 15 card decks which are easier to deduce. Play this mode over three rounds instead of four and have 2 minutes for each analysis phase. You could also play one of three different expert modes. In super size mode, when setting up the initial decks, add five additional cards from the leftovers. This will be one bonus, one cherry, one watermelon, one sun, and one moon.
You now have six decks of 25 cards and will still deduce over four rounds of play. You can play the mixed up mode. After doing the initial rearrangement of the six 20 card decks, take any two of them, shuffle them together, and re-divide them into 20 card decks. Now rearrange them again before assigning the sign boards. For a correct final deduction, you'll need to identify the numbers of the four machines which weren't mixed up and mark an X in the boxes of the two machines which were. Finally, in freestyle mode, you'll shuffle all six of the starting decks together and rearrange them into six completely random 20-card decks.
Here, your aim is to determine which of the six machines has the most empty bonuses, the most grapes, the most cherries, including bonus, and the most watermelons, including bonus. Mark your guesses with a B, C, G, and W, and you can mark multiple answers for the same machine. To be correct and score a point, that machine must have the most or equal most of that type of symbol among all six machines. There are also two booster modes of play, which add different rules and mechanisms to the game. There is the trophy insight mode. After you've assigned the decks to their signboards, take one card from each and place it on the matching lettered trophy signboard.
When players reserve machines for the spin phase, they take only the main deck, never the trophy card. This one remains hidden. How you get to look at this is as a new yellow chip bonus. As soon as you cross off a yellow chip, instead of hanging on to it to later spend on drawing two extra cards, you may cross off this bonus immediately to secretly look at the trophy card for your current machine. The other booster mode is the debug challenge. In this case, not only are the slot machines cursed, but they're also buggy, and during setup, add three bug cards to each of the decks. The bugs will not help you with deduction. However, you need to debug the machines in order to keep the curse happy.
During any spin phase after drawing, you can cross off a bonus that you've previously unlocked to remove and keep any bugs you just drew. You keep them until the end of the game. They are not shuffled back into the decks. In final scoring, the player or players with the fewest or equal fewest bug cards collected lose one point.
So, where are all your coins?
Well, it's the cost of escaping the cursed casino.
And gambling is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
Well, thanks for watching. And if you like this video, maybe you'd like to throw some coins for Strange Slot Simulator and watch this next video. Have a great day. Bye.