A peaceful Japanese shrine, an adorable lucky cat, and slot machines. That’s the unusual combination behind Maneki Mania, an incremental game developed by Javier Lianes García of Lianes8 Studio. What started as a small project for his wife grew into something much bigger, with dozens of upgrades, complicated balancing problems, and a few rather hilarious bugs. We spoke with Javier about developing the game, working with his own engine, and preparing for Steam Next Fest.
A Lucky Cat and a Personal Touch
A peaceful shrine seems like an unusual place for slot machines, but Javier had someone very special in mind when he started working on the game.
Maneki Mania combines a peaceful, lantern-lit Japanese shrine with slot machines and increasingly generous jackpots. Why did you bring these two very different moods together, and how did you approach balancing the game’s relaxing atmosphere with the excitement of gambling?
Honestly, it started at home. My wife loves Asian culture and she loves cats, and I wanted to make a game she would really enjoy. She doesn’t play for long, just short breaks here and there, so I needed something that gives you fun very fast, from the first second. A lucky cat at a shrine plus slot machines was a simple idea that fit that perfectly: you pet, things shine, numbers go up and you feel good quickly. The calm shrine is the place she likes to be, and the reels are the little rush. I didn’t overthink mixing the two moods. I just wanted it to be cozy and exciting at the same time.
We liked the idea of making something for a loved one, especially a game designed around short, relaxing sessions.
Petting the lucky cat gradually leads to automated slot spins and passive income. How did you decide when automation should take over without making the player’s original interactions feel unnecessary?
In the end automation does around 90% of the work. Once you have the six machines, they basically pet the cat for you and make enough money on their own, so petting by hand stops being necessary. But the game never lets you just sit and watch. There’s always something on the map asking for you: boats to tap, people and little characters you can grab and throw, fish, kites, lanterns. So petting is how you start, and later your hands move to playing with the world around the shrine. That was the important part for me. The machines earn the money, and you get to play.
When the Numbers Get Out of Hand
With an 85-node upgrade tree, ten lucky charms, and helpers such as the tanuki that pays interest, balancing progression sounds rather complicated. Were there any upgrades or combinations that proved surprisingly difficult to balance during development?
Everything! Really, all of it was hard to balance. The big question for me was how to make a game with no complicated mechanics, with lots of things and lots of characters, that doesn’t feel repetitive. When every system is simple, every number matters a lot. With 85 upgrades, ten charms and helpers like the tanuki, which pays you interest on what you earned since the last milestone, one change always moves something else. Some bugs were funny. At one point the capsules were feeding each other’s prizes and I got around 4e48 koban in fifteen minutes. Another time 122 small pieces of the shrine were each paying on their own. A lot of the work was just playing, changing a number and playing again.
We can imagine players being rather pleased with earning 4e48 koban in fifteen minutes, although that probably wasn’t the kind of progression Javier had planned! His examples also show how difficult balancing an incremental game can be, particularly when so many upgrades affect one another.
Preparing for Steam Next Fest
The upcoming Steam demo allows players to experience the game until they unlock the fourth slot-machine reel. Why did you choose that particular stopping point, and what are you most interested in learning from players who try it?
Because without a goal the demo would be endless. It’s an incremental game, so you could keep going forever, and I wanted the demo to have a clear end. The fourth reel is a good goal: you see the main loop, you get your first charms, you watch the shrine grow, and then the demo ends. People can play between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on how they play. What I want to learn is simple: if those minutes are fun, where people get stuck and what they would like to see next.
Besides balancing the gameplay, Javier has another important task ahead of him: making sure Maneki Mania runs properly on different PCs and handheld devices. He’s developing the game alone, using an engine he built himself, so hearing from players will be particularly useful.
You’ve described Maneki Mania as feature-complete ahead of Early Access, with much of that period dedicated to balancing and platform compatibility. Given that you’re also using your own engine, which technical or gameplay systems are you most interested in testing with a larger audience?
Balance first, always. I can only test the game my way, so I want to see how very different people play it. Then lag and performance on all kinds of PCs. And things like the Steam Deck, which I don’t have. The game supports controllers, but I really need players to tell me if it runs well there. I’m a solo dev with my own engine, so player feedback is the best testing I can get. If someone finds a problem, I want to hear about it, and I’ll fix it.
One Small Change, Half an Hour Longer
For our final question, we asked Javier what had surprised him most during development and whether he had any advice for other developers interested in making incremental games. His answer involved a tiny multiplier, an extra half-hour of gameplay, and a useful lesson about testing.
What surprised me most is how much a tiny number can change the whole feeling of the game. One time I changed a single multiplier from 1.09 to 1.045 and the full game got about half an hour longer. My advice to other devs making incremental games is to build a small simulation early, something that plays your game by itself, and to use it every time you touch a number. It saved me a lot of time and found problems before any player did. And don’t be afraid to change things a lot. Most of my good ideas came after something broke.
We’ll certainly remember that multiplier the next time someone tells us incremental games are easy to make. We also enjoyed learning how Maneki Mania began as a personal project, and how much testing and experimentation Javier has put into getting everything ready for players.
Before saying goodbye, Javier also shared a few details about where we can try the game:
Thanks a lot for the interest in Maneki Mania! The demo is free on Steam and it’s part of Steam Next Fest, which starts today. The game is also already out on Android, and it’s coming to iOS very soon.
You can try Maneki Mania through its free demo on Steam or check out the Android version on Google Play.
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