Ludum Dare 41: Roulette Knight

“Roulette Knight” by Four Quarters team (Dmitry Karimov, Alexander Goryeslavets, Alexander Vartazaryan & Dmitry Lagutov).

“Shoot your way [through] the hoards of bullets! […] [Role-playing game meets] Russian roulette.”


“Roulette Knight” is a masterpiece of a genre mashup, because it mixes gambling mechanics in the form of Russian roulette with the concept of tactical role-playing games. You will be facing a map that consists of twenty-four different ‘rooms’. The knight starts his journey in the room in the downer-left corner, but he must proceed to the final challenge room in the upper-right corner.

To get into a new room, he must survive at least three rounds of Russian roulette. Here is where the gameplay gets tactical: To get better surviving chances, you can buy special items in the shop or use stat points to upgrade your individual skill sets. For example, you can choose to increase your health or mana points, you can unlock healing spells et cetera. But if you love it risky, you can also put more bullets into your revolver to raise your reward after a successfully survived shot, which leads to more money and experience points.

“Roulette Knight” is a weirdly addictive game, that will surely make you say “Just one more round”. It got me intrigued for over three hours, not only because of the fantastic game design, which proves to be a great balance between luck and strategical resource as well as risk management, but also because of the phenomenal pixel art and the cheerful soundtrack. >>PLAY