Development Blog. - Closed test 1.4.0 - Modern Casino

In the release after 1.3.4, almost every casino game gets a Modern mode, with its prizes and balance revisited. It started with tester reports about Lucky Panel and Roulette being unfair with 5 or more players, and about Legacy Race prizes. From there we went through the casino games and reworked the others too. This post goes through what changed, game by game.

The idea: prizes that scale with level, and Legacy is still there

• Small fixed prizes (+1G, +10G, +50G and so on) become amounts that scale with the Lv of the player who flips or draws, so they're still worth having late in a match
• The way the games played until now stays available as Legacy. New matches default to Modern
• The Rules screen has new casino rows, so you can pick Modern or Legacy game by game. In the presets, Default and Modern use Modern; Legacy and Present use Legacy (except slots, where Legacy means Legacy A and Present means Present B)
• The casino picker also gets a Casino rules row. It switches Default / Legacy / Present / Modern in one go, and the chip next to each game switches just that game

High & Low: now there's a reason to stop

The prize money (20G doubling up to 1280G) is unchanged, but when you take the pot you also get every item up to your number of wins. A miss still gets nothing.

• 3 wins: Happy hat (1G for every step you walk from now on)
• 4 wins: Happy belt (another 1G per step)
• 5 wins: Lucky earring (a 3% share until the match ends)
• 6 wins: 2 Dokodemo Cards
• 7 wins (paid out automatically): Miracle necklace (until the match ends, your own shops rise 2% whenever you pass or stop on them)

So taking the pot at 5 wins gets you 320G plus the hat, belt and earrings. On expected value alone, "never stop" was the strong play; now there's a reason to cash out at 3 or 4. Under Modern, a table of the items appears on the right of the screen.

New accessories that last the whole match

High & Low, Treasure Hunt and Wakuwaku Rope can now give you accessories that stay in effect until the match ends.

• Lucky earring (+3% share), Lucky ring (+5%) and Lucky bracelet (+2%): whenever someone else pays at a shop and so on, you get a cut. They stack additively up to 50% in total, and time-limited shares such as the Lucky square are added on top
• Miracle necklace (+2%) and Miracle anklet (+1%): each time you pass or stop on one of your own shops, its price rises. Capped at 5% in total. A gold "+N%" floats up from the square, and a shop whose fee rank changes plays its transformation effect
• If you back up with Backspace mid-walk, the raises from that stretch are undone too (no pacing back and forth to keep raising)

Treasure Hunt

Under Modern, the treasure changes:

• The Happy set (hat, belt and shoes: 3G per step) replaces Lv×20G. Below Lv3 it's the Happy hat (1G per step)
• Power seed: after the casino, one of your shops of your choice rises 20% (it doesn't appear if you have no shop whose price can rise)
• The Lucky ring and Miracle anklet are new
• The Dokodemo Card and Lv×60G stay. Under Sphere Battle, at least one treasure is always a Sphere

Lucky Panel

Modern rewards (Lv is the flipper's Lv):

• The first minus panel: 30G to everyone else → 5 + Lv×5G each
• Shop price up: 1% → 2%
• +1G → Lv×10G (a Sphere under Sphere Battle)
• Stock dividend: 1% → 3%
• +50G → 25 + Lv×25G
• Holiday, turn around, 10 shares of the priciest stock and the Dokodemo Card are unchanged

You can also choose the panel layout. Modern (the layout so far) hides what's under each panel. Legacy works like the original: at the start the panels are dealt out quickly in reward order, so a sharp eye can tell what's where (CPUs remember too, depending on their strength).

For 5+ players there are two new separate settings: at most two pairs per turn, and the first minus panel is capped at three opponents' worth (that amount is split among everyone else). Both are on by default.

Double-Up Scratch

Under Modern, each tier's winning prizes are reshuffled (two of these are winners):

• Tier 1: Lv×15G, shop price +1.5%, stock dividend 2%, Half-price ticket
• Tier 2: turn around, Lv×30G, shop price +3%, stock dividend 4%, Free ticket
• Tier 3: turn around (a Sphere under Sphere Battle), Lv×60G, Dokodemo Card, 10 shares of the priciest stock, 3% of your total assets. The misses are a blank, a holiday, and Lv×15G to everyone else

A prize won in an earlier tier keeps its kind out of the later tiers (Lv×15G and Lv×30G count as one kind, and so on). CPUs now stop after tier 2 when what they're holding is worth enough. Tier 3's minus also has the three-opponents cap for 5+ players.

Legacy Race

Under Modern, the race becomes a game of picking a prize:

• There are always 6 horses, whatever the player count, and each is equally likely to win. You can pick a horse someone else picked
• Each horse carries one prize, shown as a picture on the prediction screen: cash 75 + 25×Lv G / Dokodemo Card / a shop (the cheapest unowned shop; if there's none, one of your shops +5%) / double dice + 50G / Free ticket / 5 shares of the priciest stock (a Sphere under Sphere Battle)
• Picking the 2nd or 3rd place horse gets you a smaller version of its prize: cash 35 + 15×Lv G / one missing mark / one of your shops +2% / double dice / Half-price ticket / 2 shares. With 7 or more players, 4th place too

The Half-price ticket is a new item. When you stop on someone else's shop, one ticket is used and that fee is halved. If you also hold a Free ticket, the Free ticket is used first.

The other games

• Wakuwaku Rope: 10G → Lv×10G, 100G → 25 + Lv×25G. The Lucky bracelet joins the prize pile
• Modern Race: a win pays Lv×100G (whatever the number of lanes). Each chest is 10 + 5×Lv G
• Roulette: the dealer's loss in one spin is now capped at 21 times the stake (the most a 4-player table can lose). The dealer can no longer take a huge hit alone at a 5+ player table; at 4 players or fewer nothing changes. CPU bets are now spread across even-money, 1-4, number and crown bets
• Silver Tarot: Modern Sun pays Lv×30G (one Sphere under Sphere Battle), and World × Star now gives everyone a 20% share each
• Slots: choose from five reward tables (Present A / Present B / Legacy A / Legacy B / Legacy C). Legacy B and A add a capital-increase symbol that lets you invest when it lines up; Legacy A costs 50G per spin on the casino square
• Battle Colosseum: how it plays and what it pays are unchanged

Closing

Casinos are games of luck, but we went through them one by one with two questions in mind: do the prizes fit the flow of a match, and does anyone take a huge loss alone as the table grows? If you prefer the old way, you can switch back to Legacy any time from the Rules screen or the casino picker. If you notice anything, send it from "Game review / bug report" on the mode-select screen.