Rose:For someone who has never heard of your game, how would you describe it without using the usual genre labels?
It’s a slot machine game where you build your own slot machine as you play.
Every spin draws from a pool of symbols, and those symbols interact to generate points. Between spins, you choose new symbols to add to the pool. You’re gradually shaping the machine in your favor, choosing combinations that are more likely to work together. Meanwhile, the points you need to earn keep increasing. The challenge is to build a machine whose scoring potential grows faster than those requirements.
Rose:Where did the idea for this game come from?
Luck Be a Landlord was our starting point. We enjoyed it a lot and felt there was room to explore more themes and interactions within that framework. Loreth grew out of wanting to take that experience we loved and see what we could do with our own ideas.
Rose:What makes your game different from other games in the same space?
We create our own art, music, and sound effects, so a lot of our personality goes into how the game looks, sounds, and feels. We’ve also expanded the framework with elements like a story mode and a shop phase.
But the biggest distinction is the card design. For us, the heart of this kind of game is discovering how the cards interact and finding combinations that are meaningful, surprising, and fun to build around.
The presentation adds a lot to the experience, but if the cards offer nothing you haven’t already explored elsewhere, there isn’t much reason to play another game. That’s where we put the most importance: giving players new interactions worth discovering.
Rose:Was there anything you had to cut that you still secretly wish you could put back?
We wanted to tell more of the story through a short manga illustrated by our artist. The game follows a young god entering a school for gods, learning how the world works so she can eventually create and manage a world of her own. A manga would have given that setting and its characters more life, but the additional workload was too much, so we had to cut it.
We’ve also left out plenty of card and synergy ideas we liked. Sometimes there wasn’t enough time; sometimes an idea simply didn’t fit the game’s existing systems. Liking an idea and being able to make it work within the project are two very different things.
Rose:What is something players probably won’t realize took an absurd amount of work?
The numbers behind the cards.
An interaction can sound exciting on paper, but turning it into something playable and balanced takes a huge amount of work. A new set of cards needs to hold its own alongside the others without making them irrelevant or breaking the game.
Sometimes changing the numbers isn’t enough. We have to work backward and redesign the mechanics themselves to make the balance work. Players see the final interaction, but probably not all the formulas, adjustments, and discarded versions that went into it.
Rose: What is the weirdest bug you’ve encountered that you almost wanted to keep?
Unfortunately, we haven’t had one of those happy accidents yet. None of our bugs have been charming enough to keep. So far, they’ve just been bugging us!
Rose: Is there a particular emotion you wanted players to walk away with from your game?
Satisfaction. Specifically, that moment when a combination you’ve been working toward finally comes together.
You probably won’t build your ideal setup on your first run. You need time to learn the cards, recognize opportunities, and figure out what works. Good decisions matter, and so does a little luck.
We hope players enjoy that process of discovery and eventually get to watch their symbols trigger one another, the numbers climb, and a carefully built combination do exactly what they hoped it would.
Rose: What’s one piece of advice you wish you’d had before starting?
Plan the scope more carefully before diving in, and make sure the core gameplay is fun before getting lost in the details.
Our scope kept changing during development. We had a lot of discussions, and sometimes debates, about what was necessary and what wasn’t. At one point, we felt the game wasn’t fun enough and started looking for solutions. But an idea that sounds like a simple fix can actually mean building an entirely new game inside the one you already have.
We wish we’d had a clearer framework for evaluating those ideas and understanding their cost before committing to them.
We also learned that having a good idea is only the beginning of game design. Turning it into something playable is a much bigger challenge. It’s easy to spend too long debating an art style or perfecting UI placement while the central question is still unanswered: is the game actually fun?
Rose: Five years from now, what do you hope people remember about this game?
We hope they remember a few of the card interactions and combinations they discovered.
A lot of the excitement in this kind of game comes from exploring unfamiliar mechanics. We’d love for players to encounter something in Loreth that makes them think, “I haven’t seen that before.”
If, five years later, they’re playing another game and remember a particular Loreth mechanic they enjoyed, that would mean a lot to us. It doesn’t have to be the whole game. Even one idea that sticks with someone would be wonderful.
Rose: Why should someone reading/watching this go play your game today?
If you enjoy building decks and discovering combinations, Loreth gives you a fresh collection of cards and interactions to explore. Even a game you love can become familiar after enough time. Part of the excitement is stepping into a new system and figuring out what you can do with it.
And if you’ve never played this kind of slot-machine-based game, that’s a reason to try it too. It’s still a niche format, and you might discover a kind of game you didn’t know you enjoyed.
Rose:After everything you’ve told us, can you officially confirm that your game is, in fact, probably a game? Why should we believe you?
Come on, it’s a slot machine, it has cards, and you get to be a god. Where else but a game would you find that combination? We think the evidence is pretty convincing.