1. Feels like there should be some actual slot component to the game where 3 across awards you with something.

2. I keep collecting things and avoid dragons because its easy to see them scroll by but I'm not advancing. Feels like Im missing something.

3. Don't understand why I would want the wizards unless you have to clean out old items but it seems to risky to bother. Not clear.

4. I'm enjoying the blended game but not the journey. I'm like 40+ rounds in and nothing is happening. The slot items to the right are always blacked out and it's not clear to me why that is. I've collected a ton of metal but the sword slot never unlocks.

The idea is that when the slots stop spinning, you choose a row to collect the resources for (or suffer the consequences of in the case of the dragon spaces).

Each turn, you will likely collect one or more coins.  You can either spend them at a merchant that appears in the same row, or you can  bank them for spins later.  If you spend them at a merchant, you can buy new slot spaces; they appear below the merchant's slot and will start showing up on future spins.  The reason some items are blacked out at the merchant is because you cannot afford them with the coin you have collected that round.  (The coins you have collected that round are shown on the left, and are only banked when you move to the next spin; that way, if you collect two 2-coin spaces for a total of four coins, and there are also two merchants, you can spend 3 coins at one merchant, and 1 coin at the other merchant if you want.)

There are two ways to get swords: Buy them straight out with coins, or forge them yourself with a furnace and metal.  Buying them straight up is expensive, and require you to collect 6+ coins on a single row with a merchant.  To get to that point, you need to have 2-coin and 3-coin slots land serendipitously, which can be rare.  Forging them is slightly cheaper, because one furnace can turn any number of cheap metal slots into swords, but then those slots aren't useful for buying other things.  To forge a sword, you need the slot wheels to land so that both a metal and a furnace space are on the same row.

The wizards are good for cleaning out less-valuable slot spaces.  When the game starts, there are several blanks, and as you get further in the game, you might want to start destroying 1-coins to make your 2-coins and 3-coins more likely to come out.  In the end game, wizards can save your hash by making everything but the swords and any remaining dragons less likely to appear.

It's hard to kill the dragon – even I cannot do it reliably, and I wrote the game.  But once you get the hang of the mechanics, it is definitely do-able.  You just have to find that sweet spot of not cluttering up your wheels too much, getting swords out as early as possible to start cleaning dragon slots, and trying to sneak in some score points in there as you go.

(Until you've slain the dragon at least once, I'd recommend not buying any score laurels.  Focus on getting the strategy down for killing the dragon first.)

Ok, that made the game a lot of fun and I finished it in my first go now that I understand it. 

- You say to press 0 or some odd character that looks like a 0 to continue in your startup message. For me, it's C but it takes a lot of keyboard smashing to find that key. That same character shows up in other places in the game. 

- Consider adding a tutorial popup in the store that explains more about it. When in the store, maybe have 'Q - More Info' to open a tutorial on the store. In it, try to explain some of what you did to me because it really helps. "The more gold you get on a single line, the more options you'll have in the store.", "Get metal and the foundry on a single line to make a sword or just buy one if you have gold to spare.".

Wherever you decide to put one or both of those tips, it will help players a lot I think.

Great game by the way. Love the slot mechanic. 

Thanks for taking the time to type up these suggestions.  I need to dig in there and make some of these improvements at some point.

The button label thing is one of the PICO-8 conventions; those symbols are built-in glyphs that refer to the first button or second button on the virtual console, which for desktop web browsers are mapped to X and C, but on other devices, they will be something else, such as a button added to the screen on mobile or actual physical buttons on PICO-8 enabled hardware.  In other words, if I were to say "Press C to play," that wouldn't make sense when the game is played in non-keyboard contexts.  (I probably should make a note of this in the game's instructions, though, for people not familiar with PICO-8.)

Anyway, thanks for playing, and good job slaying the dragon!

Wow, managed to collect a score of 9 on this thing :)

I like it, quite some strategy involved, likely also affected by your ability to time your hits on the rolls (I am really poor at this!).

For me what I found working is roughly as follows: Start with merchants to fill the slots (less chance to roll too bad with dragons), then preferably 3 coin slots to allow for buying the better stuff. Do this until being able to get a few swords. Then slip in a few wizards (when not enough coins to get a sword) to allow for cleaning up a bit. Towards the end pay attention to cleaned reels to see where swords are the most needed (on the reel with the most dragons, or later the last dragon, swords are not useful).

I didn't find metal and furnace too effective, likely due to my lousy skill at timing my hits. Otherwise it seems to work best if focusing on one reel for furnaces, preferably grouped tight so to make it easier to hit them, and the other three reels for metal. The rightmost reel if you would like to try to get the furnace if you happened to roll metals, the leftmost if you prefer to try picking furnace first and try to gather metal with the further rolls.

Quite fun little game!