It’s officially Summer, so we are all desperately trying to soak up some rays when the sun can actually be bothered to come out and scare away the summer rain.
We can’t spend all of our time outside though, and those game developers have been busy beavers coming up with fresh slots for us to try in our down time.
There are some brilliant looking titles coming out this month, and these are the four we are most looking forward to trying.
Let’s start off with a crazy night out shall we, in fact, let’s go all the way and have a rave, courtesy of NoLimit City.
The Rave
Now this is one to get you in the mood for a wild party.
Some of us may be too old for that sort of thing now, some of us might be regulars on the nightlife scene, but this game is for anyone who has ever been out on a bit of a mad one.
A trippy dance track will keep your head bobbing as you spin with DJ D!ck on the decks (hehe…), and the animations are loads of fun, with suitably quirky characters making up some of the symbols among items such as lollipops, glasses, a chain, and headphones.
In terms of the visual design the game is spot on, even if the theme isn’t up your street.
As for how it plays, well NoLimit City are never stingy when it comes to game features, so you will find their in house XWays, XSplit, and XBuy features active, keeping the base game interesting, but also 2 different bonus rounds.
Landing 3 or 4 ‘Drop the Bass’ scatters will trigger the ‘Murder on the Dance Floor’ bonus round, with 7 or 8 free spins granted depending on the number of scatters, plus random multipliers applied to reels 2, 3 and 4.
During this round, the bottom 3 or 4 symbols of the middle 3 reels will become enhancer cells for every spin, these will be either land an XWays symbol, an XSplit Wild, a regular Wild, or a high value character symbol which will trigger the random multiplier mentioned above.
On top of all of this, one of three random features might trigger on any bonus round spin; Mashup! which turns all character symbols into the highest paying character symbol; Sidechain, which linkes between 2 and 5 reels; and Crossfader, which turns all low paying symbols to wilds on reels 2-4.
The nice thing is that even if you only land 2 scatters and miss the bonus round, the scatters will turn into enhancer cells to give you a chance to still get a payout of some sort for that spin.
What you really want to do tough is land 5 scatters, because this triggers to ‘God is a DJ’ bonus round where 5 enhancer cells are active for 10 free spins, with everything already mentioned still applying, plus either Mashup!, Sidechain, or Crossfader will occur on every single spin.
The RTP is 96.09% which is about average, but the slot is highly volatile, and the max win is 41500x. If you end up winning more than this the bonus round will stop and you will get ‘busted’, with the police shutting the rave down – which just means you have tapped the game out and won its biggest prize.
Dork Unit
In complete contrast to The Rave, we have this little beauty from Hacksaw Gaming, and with a title like Dork Unit how could you possibly not want to have a look at it?
It’s a sweet little slot, drawing on the old fruit symbols for the most part but with crystal clear graphics to keep the game feeling modern, and I absolutely love the soundtrack here, which feels like the opening music to some feel good TV show from the 90s.
To be completely honest there isn’t a lot to learn about this one, it’s a very simple game but therein lies its charm, and it’s perfect for when those loud shouty games feel a bit too much.
The only real appearance of the dorks is during a freespins round with expanding wilds and multipliers, with the dorks themselves – Tiny Timmy, Hefty Hector, and Long Lenny – quite literally standing in as the wilds.
You need to land 3 dork symbols to trigger the round, and once it starts any future dork symbols will become expanding wilds that are sticky for the rest of the round. Once stuck in place, one of the 3 dorks will appear on all reels with sticky expanding wilds, along with a multiplier between 2x and 200x depending on the dork.
Back to the base game then and there are also ‘Gift Boxes’ which are basically multiplier wilds, that can boost payouts from 2x to 200x if they are involved in a winning payline, but landing three of them also triggers the ‘Gift Box Bonanza’ round.
During this round there are 3 free spins, but every time another gift box lands those 3 spins are reset, and all gift boxes along with their multipliers are sticky until the round ends. If you can ‘stick around’ long enough then it can end up being very exciting indeed.
So although the base game is quite quiet the bonus rounds are great, and the volatility is middling with a 96.24% RTP and a 10p minimum bet, making it a safe choice for people scared by super volatile games.
Mega Don
No it’s not about a gigantic Mafioso, it’s actually a game all about sharks, and it comes to us from the guys over at Play’nGO.
The symbols ripple into view with bubble sound effects and the whole game is wonderfully put together, really beautiful to look at.
It’s a more old school slot in the way that it plays though, despite looking top notch, because it is quite high volatility and the base game is fairly plain, so you can expect a lot of dead spins before anything really exciting happens.
For those of you that like this sort of play style though, it’s well worth a try, with 10,000x max win across the 5×4 reels, and 1024 paylines.
The RTP is bang on 96% too, so in a lot of ways the game seems average, but there is a randomly triggered ‘Snack Time’ feature in the base game which upgrades low value symbols to higher value shark symbols, and when you eventually hit the real bonus round it is lots of fun.
Landing 3, 4, or 5, scatters will net you 6, 9, or 12, freespins and 1, 2, or 3 upgrading symbols for the entirety of the round. What’s more, landing further scatters boosts these numbers further.
In a best case scenario you can end up with 21 freespins and 6 upgraded symbols.
It’s not a game that is going to set the slot world on fire (it’s set underwater so that would be impossible), but there is the potential for big wins from the bonus round.
Summer Vibes Accumul8
I had to end on a summer themed slot what with the time of year and all, and this one is brought to you by Light and Wonder, which, if you didn’t already know, is the new name for SG Digital, so it comes from very good stock.
The games is set on a sunny beach, so expect symbols like shorts, a bucket and spade, a sun hat, and an ice lolly, and bright colours all around – this game can really cheer you up!
It’s a 6×5 grid which uses cascading reels for something a little bit different, and also means you can win more than once from the same spin depending on which symbols drop in to replace any winners.
Wins are created by getting 8 or more of the same symbol anywhere on the reels, so there are no paylines as such.
The base game doesn’t get anymore complicated than that, but if you land 3, 4, or 5 Sun scatters then the freespins round will trigger, dishing out either 10, 15, or 20 freespins.
This is where the ‘accumul8’ bit comes in I think, because the round can and does get extended very easily. Landing 2 suns during the round will give you an extra 3 freespins, 3 suns will bag you 5 more freespins, 4 will give you 10, and 5 suns will add 15 extra freespins to your tally.
Not only this, but bouncy ball multipliers are added to the reels during the bonus round, and will be applied to any wins after all cascades have finished, which maximises win potential.
More than one of them can land at once and the multipliers stack, being worth between 2x and 250x each.
So the bonus round can last for ages, it did for us when we played, we ended up with 35 freespins by the time it finished from landing just 3 scatters to begin with.
Overall this is a fun and uplifting game that isn’t very demanding of the player, but still has a decent max win at 20,000x and a fair RTP of 96.06%.