Bête

what it is

You owe the Dealer six escalating installments, and the only thing you can bargain with is the rest of your life. Stake years on a spin to bend the wheel toward your bets, keep them if you come out even or ahead, lose them if you don't.

I made it for a game jam, then rebuilt it from the ground up afterwards. Inspired by Balatro, and by Doggerism for the music idea.

how a run goes

• Six installments, each with a target to reach within 8 spins. Hit it early and collect for a bonus on every unused spin. Fall short and the Dealer takes the difference in years
• Normal roulette table and payouts, and stacking even-money bets of the same size earns a cover bonus
• Stake up to 10 years on a spin for luck
• Between installments you go to the Back Room to buy charms with chips or with years, sell them, reroll the offers, or sell years for chips
• Two bosses: installment 3 runs at midnight, and the last one is played on a double-zero wheel

how it's built

The whole game model lives in plain code with no engine dependency, covered by 256 tests that run in about two seconds without Unity, plus a balance simulator that plays thousands of runs with scripted players. The interface is built entirely in code on a 640x360 grid shown at 3x. The pixel art and all 66 sound effects come out of Python scripts.

There's also a play-testing harness that drives a built copy of the game with a virtual mouse and keyboard, checks that every button did what it should, and flags any overlapping text.