King Cashing 2 (iOS)

I've had King Cashing on my radar for a while - I think because I had "Tower of Fortune" on my iphone for a while and although I really liked it's style it was hampered by some balancing issues, control issues and IAPs. Slot-machine games just seemed like such a strange genre to me, I guess I was interested, so I added it to my watch list and forgot about it.

Until it came down in price for Halloween this year! It was only 1€ and since it's got such good reviews I wanted to give it a try. What really sold me was what I read in the app description : "The idea for the first King Cashing came while playing Kairosoft's Game Dev Story. When making a Slots/RPG hybrid in the game, I wondered what that would look like in real life and thus King Cashing was born."

I've also played Game Dev Story and made some pretty strange genre-mixes while playing and always wondered: 'What would that look like?'

So how does a Slot machine / RPG work? Actually a lot like a normal RPG. You spend money to enter a fight, spin, stop the reels and try to make a match. If you match the first reel (party members) and the third reel (enemies) then damage is done, if you can match the second reel (weapons) then more damage is done, and if you can match the right weapon to the right party member then extra bonus damage is done. Battle time is limited to the number of cherries you have (3 are used per spin) and if you win the battle you win gold, some experience points and maybe a weapon.

As you play you will be playing through a comic book (at the time of writing this there are 4 books available) they layout a loose story, which isn't much of a story but it sure beats some type of level select opinion that a lot of lazy games use. You battle different opponents with different resistances and masterys - and again: no IAPs, if you beat an opponent with a gold star rating it is 'free' to battle them next time, making griding very easy.

The art style is great. The comic, the menus, the pixel graphics on the actual slot machine game - they all work perfectly, for a simple game it's got a lot of art, opponents aren't reused and because of that I have kept playing - just to see the art work.

There are loads of different weapons and combos and you have to make decisions whether to go for power or hit rate - and what to take into battle, along with bonus items and team members.

The characters in the comics that you battle all have their own pixel icon - as do your zombie companions and the weapons. This is the beast tamer getting a critical hit : wowzers!

Win a battle and you get what you pretty much get in any RPG when winning a battle : gold, experience and chance at a weapon or item. It really is a slot machine-rpg....which makes you think, maybe all RPGs are slot machine games wrapped in stories and "choices." King Cashing 2 gets it right.