Gamblin Gladiators

Originally destined for release on the S.I.C.K. console, Gamblin Gladiators was thought lost when Fraculation shut down in 1996. It gained a small following due to its promises of infinite replayability and combat that evolves around you. Our data scavengers recovered an early development build from CDs found in the old Fraculation office space! Now recovered, we can see some hints of those promises. Our scavengers have not been able to analyze all of CDs yet so stay tuned, we may uncover more complete versions!

How to play:

Bet on the outcome of combat between teams of gladiators, ???, profit!

This is an endless idle game. Try to figure out which team has the best stats, weapons, or strategies and then place your bet on the winning side. Try to make an endless amount of cash with careful bets or go all-in for a big payday. Observe the details of each gladiator before you place your bets by pressing the "/" button.

Combat Rules

The gladiators all have different brains. They make decisions based on their Gambit table. The first matched Gambit in the list determines what action the gladiator takes each turn.

The gladiators have stats. STR gives them more HP and lets them reroll for better damage on attack. Teams with more DEX go first more often. ARC allows reroll for success on spellcasting. WIL is consumed when at 0HP, when WIL goes below 0 the gladiator dies.

The combat rules are based on combat in the Moonveil TTRPG: https://lunarsignals.itch.io/moonveil

Credits

Programming - Dan Miller

Art - Lunarsignals

Musings

I ended up spending most of my time on a genetics simulation to evolve all of the teams that you see in this game. Teams would begin with random brains, fight each other, and the teams which win most often would reproduce and mutate. Over many generations they learn new strategies and combos. Some of them are the product of over 100,000 generations of evolution, and in total I've simulated approximately 10 billion battles! This means you are unlikely to see the same team twice and they're likely to use unexpected strategies against each other.

This ended up producing a game with myriad hidden and unexplained mechanics. The game itself is pure gambling with no frills, because I got sucked in by tuning the genetic simulation :). I hope you have fun trying to figure out how these little guys fight.