Hello everyone,
My wife used to play these table top video poker machines in her hometown in Canada. She especially loved the higher lower double up gamble in them. You know how nostalgia works… she went looking for a fun version to play on her tablet. But she just couldn’t find one that she liked, mainly because she couldn’t find the right gamble, or it just wasn’t fun.
No worries… husband to the rescue!
I first made the game like it’s old school counterparts. but quickly found out that a controlled higher lower gamble is never fun, no matter what you try.
So I went in a different direction, I made it so that you win big in the gamble, and the credits that you win, you use to unlock/buy power ups which make you win even bigger in the gamble 
Then I added a ton of achievements, which made it even more fun.
I was on to something now… testers spend over a hundred hours playing the game (and are still playing), and were mailing pictures back and forth of their big wins and losses.
So I added sharing to the game, to make that easier for them. Plus Facebook integration, so they could see all their playing Facebook friends ranked in game. Now everyone is hunting the crown for the top spot
After my early release on Android (to do some in-field testing), I’ve added full screen support to the game and Google Analytics support (which I can recommend to everyone, because the stats are awesome)!
What started as a “quick” game, to give my wife a fun video poker to play, ended as a project that enabled me to add almost everything to my game engine that was still on my todo list.
With the Android and iOS version done (still need to do the in-app store for iOS), I will now focus on an actual Facebook Flash version. I’ve already got the game up and running using FlasCC, but I need to add some FB/Flash specific stuff (like save settings etc…)
Feel free to check the game out on Android or iPad/iPhone, and if you have any questions on how I did certain things, feel free to ask!
Here are some screenshots:
I would like to thank everyone who has made Cocos2d-x such a great product, which includes all the contributors right here on these forums. Let’s keep making it better together!
Kind regards,
Michaël