As slot releases hit the market thick and fast, take a seat as we guide you through a selection of the industry’s latest products looking at AvatarUX’s latest PopWins title, Pragmatic Play’s bullet-shooting saloon fight, 4ThePlayer’s pooch party, and more.
PixiePop – AvatarUX
Taking place in an enchanted forest, AvatarUX has returned to the reels with a PopWins release filled with pixie dust. PixiePop is a 5×3 reel slot with up to 32,768-ways to win and a maximum win of up to x20,000 the player’s bet, while using an RTP of 96 per cent.
Nicola Longmuir, CEO at AvatarUX, said: “PixiePop offers a magical journey through an enchanted wilderness as players search for huge wins while enjoying the latest iteration of the PopWins mechanic.
“We strive to create engaging, immersive titles that build off familiar mechanics while adding new twists and this is another great example.”
With the game’s PopWins mechanic, symbols that form a winning combination will disappear to be replaced by two new symbols.
This will increase the reel set size with every consecutive win, allowing for a maximum reel set size of 5×6. The reel set will reset to 5×3 on each turn where a winning combination isn’t achieved.
Randomly during the base game, a nudge feature can be activated. This nudges specific reels either up or down to increase the chances of landing winning combinations or activating the free spins by nudging to reveal scatters.
During the free spins, multiplicative multiple symbols can appear with values between x2 and x5. These will multiply a win multiplier that becomes active when the free spins feature begins.
Additionally, additive multiplier symbols can appear with values between five and 20, adding their value to the win multiplier. This win multiplier will remain active for the duration of the bonus game mode.
Before the free spins begin, the game randomly selects a paytable symbol to become enhanced for the feature, paying out in any combination across the board – independently from paylines – as long as the symbols appear across a minimum of three reels and at least five identical symbols appear across these reels.
Heist for the Golden Nuggets – Pragmatic Play
Get ready for a bar fight as a Wild West heist takes place in Pragmatic Play’s latest release, a 5×3 reel slot with 20-paylines and a maximum win of up to x5,000 the player’s wager. The slot is highly volatile with 96 per cent.
Wild West characters with background colours of purple, brown, green, red and blue represent the high value symbols, offering between x0.5 and x20 the player’s bet.
Wild gun symbols can also appear, substituting for all symbols other than the gold nugget money symbols. Landing three, four or five wilds in a winning combination will payout x5, x10 and x20 respectively.
Additionally, gold nugget symbols can appear with monetary values ranging from x0.5 to x250 the player’s stake. Landing nuggets on reels one, three and five on the same spin will activate five free spins.
Throughout the game mode, nugget symbols will appear with their cash values blurred out. Randomly on any base game spin, these values can light up, resulting in the cash prizes displayed being awarded to the player.
In the free spins feature, all triggering nugget symbols will award their values to a meter beside the reels. Then, a bullet holster will spin through the high value character symbols, revealing one to be enhanced for the free spins game.
This enhanced symbol will take the accumulated value of all triggering nugget symbols, and will award that value as a payout each time it appears across the board.
5 Doggy Dollars – 4ThePlayer
4ThePlayer has let the dogs out with a 5×4 reel slot that has 1,024-ways to win and a maximum win of up to x5,000 the player’s stake. Medium-high volatility is on show with an RTP of 94-96 per cent.
Geoff Scaplehorn, Product Director at 4ThePlayer, stated: “With 5 Doggy Dollars, we’re letting the dogs out and leading our players to an entirely new level of gaming adventure.
“This wild ride offers the exhilaration of sniffing out abundant cash prizes, the thrill of digging after the big, super, mega, and ultra bones, and the dynamic gameplay that our players have come to cherish.
“We believe that the blend of our unique Money Ways system, the frisbee feature and the
barking respin bonus creates a perfect fetching game that will have players wagging their tails in excitement. We’re confident that 5 Doggy Dollars isn’t just another walk in the park. It’s a game that’s going to make players ‘bark’ for more, time and time again!”
Landing winning combinations that involve symbols with prize bones on them will award the prize value of the bone to the player’s payout. Additionally, dog bowl collect scatters can drop into play to award all prize bone values present on the same spin.
Big prize bones are also available, offering big (x50), super (x200), mega (x1,000) and ultra (x5,000) values to be collected by the dog bowl scatters.
Landing three or more respin trophies at once will trigger the respin game mode, awarding three spins to land as many prize bone dog symbols on an empty reel set as possible.
Additionally, ‘pick’ kennels are included, with three to five kennels on the same spin triggering the pick me bonus game, in which players can win between x5 and x5,000 their stake.
With the respins bonus game mode, players are given three spins to land as many dogs with prize bone symbols on the reels as possible. They are given three spins, with each symbol that drops in resetting the number of spins to three.
Once all spins have been played out, the player will receive the sum of all prize value bones on the board.
In the pick-me bonus game, players are presented with several kennels that have hidden bonus prize values behind them, ranging from x5 to x5,000.
Players are given as many picks as there were scatters that triggered the game mode, from three to five.
Moreover, a random frisbee feature can occur in both the bonus and base game modes. In the latter, the frisbee causes the reels to shuffle into new places to either create or improve a win.
In the bonus game mode, this randomly activated frisbee feature will collect and unlock full reels of prize bone symbols and multiplies their payouts by x2.
Crystal Catcher – Push Gaming
Push Gaming has players mining for gems and crystals in its latest 7×7 reel slot with a maximum win of up to x5,000 the player’s bet. The slot has medium volatility with an RTP of 96.3 per cent.
Konstantinos Vytsaras, Director of Games at Push Gaming, said: “Crystal Catcher has enjoyed an amazing reception during its initial exclusivity period with Kindred and we are pleased to see immense anticipation for it ahead of its network release.
“Players can look forward to a fresh theme while familiar mechanics, made popular by titles such as Jammin’ Jars and Retro Tapes, offer a lot of replayability for them to enjoy.”
Crystal Catcher also includes two non-paying symbols – a crystal and a bonus crystal – as well as two wild symbols, a beetle and a gold beetle. The wild gold beetle can help players achieve cascading wins.
The wild substitutes for all other symbols except for the crystal and bonus crystal. It also always has an x1 multiplier associated with it.
Instant prize symbols are also part of the game as a bet multiplier, which can be obtained when a wild beetle flies over to the symbol. Instant prize symbols can have values of x1, x2, x3, x5, x10, x20, x30, x50, x100, x200, x300 and x500.
During the Crystal Catcher feature, whenever a wild beetle flies and collects an instant prize, crystal or bonus crystal, the wild’s multiplier will increase by one while a gold beetle will be left behind. Each gold beetle will also have a respective multiplier from the flying beetle.
If more than one instant prize, crystal or bonus crystal is present on the reels, a gold beetle will be left behind every time the beetle takes flight. If a beetle collects a bonus crystal, seven free spins will be awarded to the player.
During the free spins, the wild beetle multiplier will increase by one for each crystal or instant prize collected, leaving behind a golden beetle with the respective multiplier every time it takes flight.
Beetles will stay in place when a collapse or cascade occurs, and golden beetles will cascade off at the start of every free spin.
Cluster Tumble Dream Drop – Relax Gaming
Releasing another slot using the brand’s Dream Drop jackpot mechanic, Relax Gaming presents a cluster-paying slot with an 8×8 board and a maximum win of up to x20,000 the player’s wager. The game uses high volatility with an RTP of 94 per cent.
Shelley Hannah, Director of Casino Products at Relax Gaming, stated: “This is the fifth instalment of the storied Temple Tumble series. We are excited to head deep into the Himalayan wilderness for some high volatility cluster pays action.
“Everyone at Relax is confident that this title will be well received by operators and players alike, especially due to the epic Dream Drop jackpot.”
Throughout the game, wins are formed by landing at least four identical symbols in a cluster where the symbols are adjacent to each other.
Once wins have been achieved, the winning symbols will explode to make way for new symbols to drop in and increase the spin’s win potential.
The large 8×8 reel-set uses empty stone blocker symbols to fill out the board while the paytable symbols only drop into a small space on the reels at the start of each spin.
However, these blocker symbols can explode to make way for new symbols if a win occurs next to them. The blocker symbols can also reveal enhancements when exploded, with one feature dropping wilds into play.
Additionally, lightning blocker symbols will reveal a paytable symbol when they land next to a winning combination, causing every identical symbol on the board to explode afterwards.
Fire blocker symbols can also drop into play, transforming other symbols into a symbol that it reveals when landing next to a win.
When activating the free spins, players are given five spins. Meanwhile, each scatter that drops in will award an additional spin each.
If they manage to land enough clusters and cascading wins on one spin so that the board contains no blocker symbols, an extra three spins will be provided while a win multiplier of x3 becomes active for the duration of the game mode.
When activating the Dream Drop jackpot game mode, players are taken to a different game board where Dream Drop symbols drop into different sized reels that represent each jackpot prize.
Once a jackpot prize reel has been filled with DD symbols, the respective jackpot will be awarded to the player. Rapid, midi, maxi, major and mega jackpots are available.
