God judged me for killing someone in Meaningless Random Numbers but I owe the devil some money so what else could I do?
In front of me is a single die. It costs me a bit of money to roll it, but I get a four, so I get four dollars, so I’m making a profit all the same. It costs me a bit more to roll this time. I do it anyway, and I get a bit more money, and more importantly experience points. After a while, I’m able to add in another die. You know what that means: more money. And I need the money, because I owe the devil a good few hundo. This is Meaningless Random Numbers, an incremental horror game where god is watching you.
The above is more or less the core conceit of Meaningless Random Numbers. There are dice, and you roll them, with each roll constituting a day. As the days dwindle you get closer and closer to needing to pay off your debt to the devil. Upon unlocking a second dice, you can get pairs, which adds a multiplier to your score, netting you more money. Before the day of debt collection arrives, you can choose to spend your money on upgrades, like increasing the multiplier number when you get a pair, or gaining more experience points per roll.
Get enough experience points and you level up, netting you one singular point to spend on more dice or the ability to reroll a die in the hopes you get a better number. It’s all about gaming the system. And then comes the gun. After paying off your debt twice, you can prestige to unlock permanent upgrades for future runs. The gun is the first big upgrade you can get, and upon rolling a three of a kind (where every dice roll is the same number), you get bullets.
The numbers haunt even the bullets. Should you choose to use your gun, you can fire it at random people. Like, say, at a single mother, for example. If you’re lucky and get a roll that’s high enough, you kill this stranger, and can increase how much fear you have in your possession, increasing your score multiplier further. It’s all just a game, after all. But god notices your sins and watches you from this point on, and if you’re unlucky, you may be punished for your transgressions.
Meaningless Random Numbers most certainly makes those numbers not particularly meaningless quite quickly, turning every roll you make into one that means life or death. It’s simple presentations and strong character art effuses style, opting for a photobash vibe with some character portraits that look like they’d be perfect in a visual novel you’d never heard of. If any of the above sounds like it’s up your alley, then you can try out the game’s demo on Steam for yourself right now.