Slots & Daggers

• Genre: Strategy... roguelike?
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes. 
• Time Played: I have no idea to be honest but I'll guess 4-5 hours?
• Too Short/Long: It's fine.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: It's more about the sound effects than the music.
• Why I played: I just happened to see it on some indie showcase video and thought it looked interesting enough to give a shot. Saw a few people say it's better on mobile(and also half the price) so I grabbed it on the phone, but it's on PC and consoles. It's not a service game.
• Jank: I think there are so typos or something in some of shop upgrades. Certain items don't reflect their bonuses properly in the upgrade text, but that's about it.
• Difficulty: It's not really difficult at all. It's not really "roguelike" but other people classify it as such. Progression is strictly limited. The only "roguelike" elements, are what appears in the shop/when, and there isn't exactly enough variety that you won't happen upon such items. I wouldn't call a randomly generated shop to be a roguelike when nothing else is random about it... except the fact that the main mechanic is a slot machine.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It was fun for a little while, I'm pleased for what it was.
• Recommend to others: I might recommend it to someone who likes say, Balatro, just because of the similar theming. They're not really similar from a gameplay perspective except for the game being about manipulating a gambling mechanic in a not traditional way.
  

Slots & Daggers was a fun little distraction for a little while. It's kind of a small game that I feel could be explored much further. There is just enough variety in abilities to keep it entertaining for it's runtime. I did what I thought seemed like the best way to approach the game, tried the opposite, and then did something completely different and won.

I'd personally sooner compare it to an incremental game than a roguelike, as your on-going upgrades increase your power on an incremental level from run to run. It's surely impossible to win the game without any upgrades at all considering enemies would straight up do more damage than you have HP in a single attacks later on, and you can only do a fraction of theirs in the meantime. However, strategies where you don't solely rely on the randomness of the slots and purposefully utilize your items are valid, so it's not quite on the level of an incremental game as a "clicker" either. Somewhere between I guess. Though I still say it's almost not "roguelike" at all, but I guess I don't get to decide that.