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Thoughts on the Prize Wheel?

15 replies [Last post]
Wed, 06/03/2026 - 09:24
Draycos's picture
Draycos

The prize wheel after clearing a stage has been around for ages, but outside of vending lootboxes, it hasn't really done anything for me. I vaguely remember getting a Mod Calibrator from it once, which was nice. It doesn't seem to be influenced by difficulty nor heat collected in a stage, just tier. Have you gotten anything cool from it?

I'm surprised there was a never a stage clear reward (prize wheel or otherwise) that gave firecrystals based on heat given how strictly tied rarities are to treasure boxes otherwise. Seems like it'd be an easy way to make them more consistent in the stages that could use it, like Danger Missions.

Wed, 06/03/2026 - 10:59
#1
Nethorse's picture
Nethorse
kleptolisk!

I think I've gotten a lockbox from the wheel...once? twice? Mostly it's just a bit of extra level-end fanfare. It can give you health if you're not full, which is nice, but it doesn't check if you still have your emergency revive first, so it can be kind of a waste (even if there's a good chance not much better would roll). I'm not even sure I've actually landed on the funny kleptolisk that presumably gives nothing; just watched it roll by.

Guaranteed crystals for heat collected at level clear would be neat, since it'd kind of compensate for heat not counting toward anything if your gear is all ready to be forged. I didn't play for too long before the forge update, but getting multiple levels on a weak item from a deeper clear or accumulating levels over a boss stratum was satisfying in a way forging doesn't allow. It wouldn't be the same, but at least the heat wouldn't feel pointless to gather.

Wed, 06/03/2026 - 13:14
#2
Bopp's picture
Bopp
object

I have objected to the prize wheel since it was introduced.

For one thing, it abruptly yanks me out of the game world. "Phew! I just survived that monstrous onslaught and those poisonous traps. Now I'm at a miniature casino?!"

For another thing, it's a form of gambling. It seems harmless, because no buy-in is required, but I wonder whether it is just the nudge that problem gamblers need, to remind them that they could be gambling. I would like to see a decreased emphasis on anything resembling gambling.

Wed, 06/03/2026 - 14:12
#3
Draycos's picture
Draycos

I agree with you both. I don't think it's a coincidence it was rolled out as the game got an increasingly gross focus on gambling, whether the Forge or the lootboxes the prize wheel's rigged to give you more of if you've been opening them.

Thu, 06/04/2026 - 13:27
#4
Promethiean's picture
Promethiean
@Bopp

As much as I agree with the game's design being "hey you should gamble" I do hope it's not going there anymore. The prize wheel is nice but I wish it was worth anything other than Lockboxes and Mod Calibrators. Or better yet, just put those items in Treasure Boxes in the Arcade and rid of the wheel.

Sat, 06/06/2026 - 07:45
#5
Vyre-Acidlashed's picture
Vyre-Acidlashed
Now that you mention it...

There *is* something odd about so much of the game's design fixating around random chance for progression and cosmetics. I don't want to cry foul immediately but it is a litle discouraging to have so little ability to direct your own experience - at least insofar as having fun *with the game* is concerned. Having the experience design centred on the (I hesitate to say) "dopamine hit" of a high roll feels... nasty, almost. I don't play to win prizes or game the auctionhouse.

Isn't there something more concrete I could be playing for? I don't know - I don't know if I want to suggest something like a token that lets a player pick something specific off the prize wheel after so many runs or if I'd rather there was "just less of that gambling-adjacent game-feel" that comes from removing it outright.

For the most part I'm pro-player when it comes to making suggestions and less concerned about the value of digital cosmetics in an imaginary economy; I am *aware* of the impact just getting to *pick* prize boxes would have on that economy, but they remain trinkets in a videogame so I care quite little about their dollar value - at that point, it is strictly zero. I feel like a healthier gameplay loop and more content would be the better alternative - so far the incentive structure around prize boxes and game mechanics funnels material towards merchants and out of the hands of players who would enjoy those items the most, as progression needs a little bit of rework...

I don't know, I've been rolling the state of the game around in my head for a while now, and I can feel that something is off but I can't quite put my finger on what it is, yet. More and more I'm seeing commentary about the state of the "in-game economy" as though people are afraid they're going to lose their condo in Jigsaw Valley when the reality is their money is Gone once it is in the game. It doesn't feel great to see so much game design orbiting the speculative value of digital goods when it could be centred on... well, the Playing of the Game.

Though, to touch on the economy matter - I'd sooner there was a scenario room in the clockworks that features a merchant who has a randomized assortment of cosmetics for sale for CE than yet another set of randomized prize boxes. Ties the two halves together - getting fun new things, and actually exploring the clockworks. Being asked to drop ten dollars for a prize box is a *little* much. This game's cute, but it's not that cute...

Sat, 06/06/2026 - 08:05
#6
Thats-Rough-Buddy's picture
Thats-Rough-Buddy
@Vyre-Acidlashed Your

@Vyre-Acidlashed

Your instincts around overemphasis of "in-game economy" and gambling are correct. I personally don't mind supporting GH with some purchases every once in a while, but would very much like to see what SK could become without the need for monetization.

The thing that has been and will always be "off" with SK is that every single design decision has to encourage spend first and entertain the players second. GH has to eat, so they need to do this, but it's the reason why SK is how it is with poorly balanced reward structures.

The randomized rewards also hide the relative lack of content, which is very expensive to develop. Outsourcing level design to the players is smart on GH's end, but the quality will suffer as a result.

Tough problem to solve.

Sat, 06/06/2026 - 10:16
#7
Vyre-Acidlashed's picture
Vyre-Acidlashed

@Thats-Rough-Buddy: I know you! I've seen you around the forums; this is a nice surprise!

I desperately want to spend on this game - I *want* to support it - but in two entirely separate forum posts, now, I've been slowly homing in on a thought that the issue isn't actually Crowns-Versus-Energy, it's Dollar-Versus-Experience.

The scary thing about pitching an overhaul of that experience so that it's more desirable (and subsequently more buyable) is it kind of demands walking back a lot of older decisions... It also demands upsetting whale buyers by absolutely crashing the Box Economy, but something has to change. Player produced cosmetics do come to mind, or player-produced item competitions, actually... I mean, I can use blender, I can export a rigged GLTF file, I can participate - if the doors for that open and a solid review process emerges (with VERY clear standards and practices guidelines).

Quality *might* suffer, and I don't expect this game to get the kind of community engagement and play concurrency of, for example, TF2, but *like the aforementioned*, community-developed small-scale play experiences and development-team-developed large-scale play experiences are probably the real way this problem gets solved.

Spiral knights is just a little bit too small, like you said, and it has to play some sort of mean tricks to keep that fact a secret - but if you're blind to those tricks, and just play the mechanics and gameplay loops like I try to do, it starts to lay its scope and scale a little too bare, and as a result a large amount of the discussion around game economy starts to feel like a lamentation of the experience not being special enough. "My rare gear has lost value" sort of hits different when that assessment is made from a place of pushing for low accessibility to retain "value" (whatever that represents in a fictional reality), contrasted against something like a balance change that means you get to use it less (which is a kind of aforementioned "value" that does feel much more tangible).

In a way, I even agree - it isn't special enough to command the price it's trying to, yet, but if that's the case... we can focus on making the experience more special, rather than just giving the impression of that by way of randomization mechanics.

I wonder if a staged approach that invites User Created Content (UCC) into the game in early stages, branching out into more expansions and patches from GH (when they get back into the saddle proper), would be effective or even viable... but that's my compulsion to apply professional analysis to a cute little java game from the early 2010s; I don't know their operations or dynamics, let alone their costs.

UCC Competitions that provide mutual benefit (in that GH gains a larger salable inventory and players are encouraged to join the fun for in-game bonuses) represent only one avenue of tackling the matter, though; beyond that it's probably just reality that GH has an internal design team trying to get this specific matter resolved as we speak and are still in the data-gathering phase... Placating big-spenders and gradually transforming the game into a gacha is a short-term win but in the long term it puts the game on life support *real* fast.

"Tough problem" might be an understatement.

Sat, 06/06/2026 - 10:19
#8
Vyre-Acidlashed's picture
Vyre-Acidlashed

Something that went unsaid, actually - reward structures are complicated to get a handle on because a wide playerbase extracts value from different parts of play, but it's not *always* about "what did I win from playing?" Sometimes a valid reward structure is just making players feel stronger for the gear they got, which is why I keep talking about balance in all these posts... I think there are LOTS of ways to tackle this, if I were to be honest with myself, the thing that is tough is picking the most impactful one *now*, to steer the ship away from rough waters before it starts rocking real badly.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 11:47
#9
Refraizen's picture
Refraizen
Hrmm

I get what's being said here, but I personally like the prize wheel. Yeah for some people it can be immersion breaking, but after playing for so long it's nothing I notice anymore. I personally treat the prize wheel as this neat little bonus "reward" for completing the run, which is often times completely useless (though in some areas, getting a remedy or pill is actually huge).

Mod calibrators due to their expensive price now is a straight pog, I can't see any reason why people would complain about these.

Lockboxes however... ehh. I like the idea of being able to get lockboxes at a chance for playing the game, literally rewarded for playing.
What I don't like the coded formula behind obtaining lockboxes. If you don't know, ask around or do some searching.

I find the FORMULA for lockbox obtainment rates to be predatory. It was straight-up awful to learn about the first time.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 12:51
#10
Vyre-Acidlashed's picture
Vyre-Acidlashed
Oh.

I genuinely thought that lockbox thing was hearsay. If there's data for that, then that's... kind of wretched.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 17:00
#11
Draycos's picture
Draycos

It sure is!

I don't really have any qualms about the game being monetized in some fashion. OCH remains the single best purchase I've made in this game, and I don't regret a couple of other early buys like the Guardians armor pack. There's an alternate universe SK where development kept going that route instead of targeting all sorts of dark patterns with hyper-rare drops, lootboxes, and costume/accessory binding with massive unbind costs... or development kept going at all, really.

It's not all glum, though. The engine upgrades and stronger servers are a good sign. Reducing the firecrystal costs down from "insane" to "pretty bad" alongside indirectly making UVs cheaper was a positive move. From various staff comments both here and on the Steam forums, there have been allusions to level creation propagating to PvE and some kind of balance patch being in the works, though as a friend put it nicely, there's no telling whether it's in two weeks, two months, or two years.

This game's future hinges on that: what they do next and how well they address feedback in the gameplay sense, especially since the track record so far has been pretty bad on that front outside of reintroducing Shrine of Slumber and slapdashing Turbillion together. I'm interested to see what they'll do.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 17:10
#12
Vyre-Acidlashed's picture
Vyre-Acidlashed

I don't want to say I've developed a negative opinion over the last couple of days but I am definitely aware of a few things now that I wasn't before and they don't feel super, but despite that, I still have hope? I don't know, list me squarely under the column marked "tentatively excited for a good time, whenever it comes along." All of you here - Draycos, Refraizen, Fallen, ThatsRough, and so on - have been extremely helpful, by the way, not just in helping further discussion about the game, but pointing out things to be aware of.

From this returning player, thank you; I'll be able to go forwards knowing what to watch for.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 17:52
#13
Draycos's picture
Draycos

"Tentatively excited" is the right way to be. Cynicism about game direction, monetization, obfuscation, whatever - actions will always speak louder than words, particularly when they've always been keen on saying nothing at all and hiding information where it would benefit them to do so. Still, there are so many ways to improve this game content-wise that doing almost anything would be a net positive so long as they're willing to listen to player feedback when they make unambiguous mistakes. This game's biggest gameplay blunders throughout its history have consistently been when they haven't, and between mimic vaults releasing blatantly incomplete and staying that way and the recent Slime Casino kerfuffle, I'm wary that will continue... but they still haven't really done anything to adjust the gameplay on a large scale, and they did alright refurbishing Shrine of Slumber (though the gear's poorly tuned) which makes those allusions to balancing or level creation so interesting.

In any case, I hope you have fun revisiting this game while many other people are, myself included. The worst that happens is that something explodes and that'll still be an exciting break from the status quo of absolutely nothing.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 18:01
#14
Refraizen's picture
Refraizen
& @Vyre

These forums are a lot of exchange of information and frankly most of the time people come here when there's something they don't like about the game or things they wished would be better. Though frankly, this is miles better than times where the game was practically dead.

If you feel bogged down by the different perspectives thrown around, I would recommend taking a short break from forum discussions, relax, and just genuinely enjoy the game. We mostly focus on the negatives here and sometimes it's important to take a step back from all of that. There are absolutely plenty of good things about the game that aren't talked about nearly as much here, and those are the things that you'll have to find from your gameplay to really appreciate.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 18:24
#15
Vyre-Acidlashed's picture
Vyre-Acidlashed
@Draycos, Refraizen: Yeah,

@Draycos, Refraizen:

Yeah, fair. Funny thing is I only really started digging into the forum to compete in the storyboard comp, saw a few things I agreed with, and thought I'd offer my two crowns on some stuff I'd like to see in the depot. I think my first post on this whole economy thing was in a topic started by Witelite, and there I mostly yapped directionlessly about some things I'd like to see.

I dunno, I ain't losing sleep over it so much as the forge changes set a high bar of expectation - that change was *huge* for me! I remember the long-ago times of spending a lot of time grinding and getting nowhere. You're both right, a couple of things have changed for the better and it's been really nice, but yeah, I could stand to take a couple breaths about it and see what happens.

Y'all've been a blast, though, it's been great getting into the thickets and learning so much about the game's history from so many perspectives. Thanks!

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