Despite the fact that they keep coming like the hordes of walkers in The Walking Dead, casino games for browsers and mobile devices feel like they may reach a crossroads soon. You can dress up slots, blackjack, and poker with fancy graphics and add in social features and achievements, but ultimately there are only so many ways to show off the same games, and we’ve seen them all. “Au contraire,” says CasinoRPG… or it would, if an upcoming game could speak French.
Despite the fact that they keep coming like the hordes of walkers in The Walking Dead, casino games for browsers and mobile devices feel like they may reach a crossroads soon. You can dress up slots, blackjack, and poker with fancy graphics and add in social features and achievements, but ultimately there are only so many ways to show off the same games, and we’ve seen them all. “Au contraire,” says CasinoRPG… or it would, if an upcoming game could speak French.
GoldFire Studios thinks it may be holding a winning hand when it comes to giving gamers a deeper casino experience. So deep, in fact, that it involves not just playing the games but building up your very own casino empire on your PC, tablet or smartphone. Think one part gambling sim, one part tycoon game and one part role-playing game, and you’re on the right track to grasping CasinoRPG, which the company hopes to launch later this year.
Let’s tackle the simplest part first, which is the casino sim. GoldFire plans on having blackjack, Texas Hold’em poker and multiple varieties of slot machines ready to play right from the start. Other favorites like craps and roulette are possibilities depending on beta tester feedback.
The tycoon aspect has a look that is similar to other casino builder games, with slots and table games able to be placed in various locations. Much more intriguing is the concept art that shows off various designs for the exterior of a player’s casino. Or maybe that should be casinos, plural, since the studio promises gamers will eventually be able to own a globe-spanning family of gambling facilities. The actions of other players and NPCs will impact their bottom lines.
That dovetails nicely into the RPG elements, as it appears the game has a story to tell. Specifically, the idea is that each player will start out as a penniless janitor and have to work all the way up the ladder to casino mogul. That’s not exactly the way Steve Wynn did it, but it does promise to lend some more meaning to quests than in the typical social/mobile casino game.
Since it’s being built on HTML5, the idea is that CasinoRPG will play the same way on any internet-enabled device. This might end up as the game’s true killer feature, as the lack of titles with real cross-platform play in a persistent world is one of the big motivations driving the development team. Pull it off and the world just might beat a path to the virtual casino door.
To help make the game a reality, GoldFire has launched a Kickstarter campaign – though with some of the recent backlash against unfinished projects no doubt fresh in his mind, CEO James Simpson has stated that the money is mostly to help get through the beta testing process and that the game is “this close” to being complete. For updates on when the launch becomes a reality, click the follow button up top and start dreaming of your own casino role-playing adventure.
