The stalactites were as thick as trees and embedded themselves into the ground. Two of them were grouped together on the right hand side leaving a gap between them and the third. Before I could hit them the gap blinked red for a quick second and I was prompted to hit the one of the correct arrows. I tapped the left one and my slot machine vehicle swerved just in time to avoid crashing into the stalactites.
There was another roar from the Goat-Troll and more stalactites fell. This time the gap was in the center. As soon as the gap blinked red I hit the right arrow and the machine swerved back, putting me back in the middle of the cave. I readied myself for the next round of stalactites but there was no roar and none fell. Instead there was a blink of red directly behind the machine.
It was almost too late as I hit the down arrow. As I did, my character braked hard and a boulder fell right in front of him followed by a blinking light from either side. I hit the left arrow and swerved past the boulder slightly clipping it with the machine. For a second I thought I lost, but the slot machine kept going and the game did not end.
“Good moves little worm,” Grinny said into my ear. “You can do this.”
I wanted to respond but the camera angle changed again. It moved in front of me and showed the Goat-Troll chasing me with its club raised in the air.
“That was the easy part,” the slot machine voice said. “Now comes the real fun. The troll will swing his club at the ground and you must continue to avoid it, but there will be no indicators to show you which is the right way to move. And before you complain about fairness again, we are giving you three lives to do this.” At the bottom of the screen three icons of my head popped up in a row. “Okay, are you ready, Go!”
As soon as the voice said Go, the Goat-Troll roared and brought its club down. I quickly pressed the right button to dodge it but my car didn’t move. The club smashed into my vehicle and pushed my head down inside it like a game of whack-a-mole. One of my lives popped away leaving two more. The club raised up again and my head popped out of the slot machine.
“What the hell happened?” I cried. “I hit the button.”
“Your left became your right,” Grinny said. She was right and I wanted to slap myself. When the camera had changed angles so had the directions.
The club raised again and as it came down I hit the left arrow this time. I actually pressed it twice to make sure that the machine registered it. My character slid over two spots and the club hit empty ground. The next few swings were easy to dodge. The Goat-Troll was slow so I could wait until the top of its swing before moving over. With every miss it roared which caused more stalactites to fall around us. Thankfully, they only fell outside of the track and weren’t part of the current game. All in all, this part of the game was pretty easy which gave me a twinge of foreboding.
“So it’s as I thought,” the Bigfoot person said. “Even the difficulty of this game is based on luck.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, dodging another swing.
“I’ve been in this place a while kid. I know almost everything there is to know about these machines. I get very few chances to study this bonus game of yours so any time someone plays it, I get to see if my predictions are right, and it seems they are.”
I remembered back to what Livery the receptionist at the entrance said. “Are you Motero?”
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The bigfoot man smiled. “I am. But that don’t matter now. Keep concentrating and you might win. Only seen one other win and that was a long time ago.”
After one last dodge both my slot machine character and the Goat-Troll stopped as the machine voice spoke again. “Good job in making it this far. You are nearly at the exit, but now you must dodge the troll one more time, but this time you won’t know where it's going to hit. You must choose one of the three spots to place your character and then the Goat-Troll will smash the spot it has already randomly chosen. Now choose 1, 2, or 3.” The three numbers popped up on the screen.
I turned to Grinny. “Which one should I pick?”
“You want me to choose?” Grinny gave me an unsure look. I nodded. “Alright, 3, since that’s where you already are.”
I pressed the number 3 and held my breath as everything unpaused. Without any preamble the Goat-Troll slammed down and hit the number 2 spot. I let out a relieved sigh.
“Ha,” Motero said. “Good thing you didn’t ask me. I would’ve chosen that one.”
The machine congratulated me and my character drove out through the cave entrance and back onto the track. Not too far away was a pedestal with a mountain of gold with something big on top that was covered up with a red curtain.
“Looks like you’re almost there,” the machine said excitedly. “The good news is that you are far ahead of the Goblin King. The bad news is that in this final stretch the stakes are much higher. You only have three more paces to go, but you will not be playing the slots for movement anymore. You will be playing to not be sent all the way back to the start. And let me tell you, there will be no chance to catch up if that happens since the bridge was destroyed. So let’s go.”
I pulled the lever of my machine and the slots on my vehicle spun. The first one landed on “Back to Start,” while the other two landed on random numbers. My character moved up one space. From behind me I could feel the quietness and tension of the crowd that had gathered. The anticipation was like seeing a basketball player make a free throw that would win them the game. I pulled the lever again and when the slots stopped they all displayed numbers. My character moved up again.
Before I pulled the lever again I looked to Grinny. “Let’s do this one together.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “They said that if I win the prize goes to both of us. So we either succeed together or fail together.”
She smiled as we both put our hands on the lever and pulled. The anticipation of the entire crowd grew almost suffocating me as the first spinner stopped on “Back to Start.” I held my breath again as the second one also stopped on “Back to Start.” The third one began to slow down and Grinny squeezed my hand. The slot stopped on “Back to Start” for a long second before clicking over to the number 0.
Me, Grinny, Motero and the entire crowd cheered as my character drove into the pile of gold and the machine itself began to ring and flash with colors. It was an explosion of sound that threatened to blow through the upper floor and take out the roof of the casino.
“Congratulations,” the machine said, “you have not only won 100,000 gold, but a brand new vehicle built for two drivers.” The curtain lifted off the top of the gold pile revealing a huge hummer-like car, but in the shape, off all things, a VW Beetle with monster truck wheels. “This is the Rhino Beetle. With its armored plating it is built to withstand a crap ton of punishment. I guarantee you that the Goat-Troll would never be able to penetrate it no matter how many times or how hard it swung its club. But that’s not all.”
A panel opened up on the passenger side of the roof and a dome magically appeared and a gatling machine gun poked its way out of it.
“No longer will you have to concentrate on both driving and shooting as those duties will be split between each of you. And what’s best is that two other guns can be equipped to the dome, but you must choose which one before activation.”
After the machine finished speaking, the screen faded to black and returned to its normal slot machine mode. It then spit out a piece of paper that had a barcode on it and said, “Present this to the Prize Counter to receive rewards.”