Big Time Gaming, an Australian company, has expanded its lineup of 4-reel slots to include Pop. Donuts, the first installment in the series, was greeted with great enthusiasm upon its debut in 2018. The second iteration, Chocolates, failed to captivate Donuts’ fans despite having identical gameplay and larger prizes. BTG may have stopped using candy since it didn’t live up to the expectations and instead opted for balloons, which are just as adorable but far safer for your teeth.
Perhaps the modest balloon’s link with children explains why it is rarely seen in iGaming. In The Incredible Balloon Machine, Crazy Tooth made some witty jabs at them. Pop, on the other hand, has a more familiar feel, being played out on a 4×4 grid and offering 256 ways to win, so it’s reasonable to call it a more traditional game.
The cool mountain air of Chocolates has been replaced by the warm, salty ocean winds of the Pacific. Big Time Gaming has zeroed down on the world-famous Santa Monica pier as the site for its Pop slot machine. There’s a Donut stand off to the left and a gently spinning illuminated Ferris wheel in the distance, all of which hearken back to BTG’s initial smash. The game’s audio consists mostly of a repetitive collection of bleeps and a low-key electronic number that sounds like a standard background track on a cheap keyboard. Overall, a seemingly harmless game that can actually be pretty harmful.
You may play Poppin’ on any device with bets ranging from 10 pence to £/€20. The very unpredictable mathematical models are a feature shared by all three 4×4 games thus far. Players should also be prepared for Pop, since unlocking the extra game wasn’t always easy in Donuts. There’s no reason to have any reservations about the 96.54% RTP, since this is par for the course with Big Time Gaming.
Nine-aces tiles provide the lowest payouts, while balloons in shades of green, blue, red, and purple award the highest payouts. Payouts for winning combinations of four of a type on a single line range from 0.8 to 2 times your wager. To sum up, low value royals only pay out for 4-symbol combos, whereas premiums only need 3-symbol combinations to win.
Boom: Video Slot Extras
Pop’s unusual spin mechanism may induce nausea in certain people. High-paying balloons and wilds float higher to fill the empty spaces between royals as lower-paying symbols spin below. It probably won’t make you feel woozy, although it may be disorienting at first.
When someone have a lucky spin and win, they often celebrate. When a successful combination is made, the associated symbols burst off the board, leaving only balloons to fill the empty spots. Rolling over occurs in reactions until there are no longer any possible permutations.
Although they may replace any other icon besides the scatter, the rainbow wilds have other special abilities as well. Wilds have the potential to disclose a multiplier of up to 4x in the standard game. Each wild that contributes to a win has a multiplier that is applied to the win total.
Three or more BTG gold coin scatters anywhere on the reels trigger twelve free games. Each of the 16 spots can have a multiplier that remains in effect for the duration of the free spins bonus and, in certain cases, increases as the round progresses. A multiplier of x2, x3, or x4 is applied initially to any location that had a triggering scatter. The base pay rate for all other roles is 1x. Each time a balloon or wild combination contributes to an initial spin win, the multipliers for one or more of the winning places will rise by a random amount between 1 and 3.
Any bonus spin in which 3 or more scatters appear offers an additional 3 free spins and raises all multipliers by 1. Each retrigger also results in a cumulative one-point rise to the multiplier.
A Popular Opinion on the Fruit Machine’s Justice
To begin, I’d want to remark that Pop is a commendable development in BTG’s 4-reel lineup, but one that is more incremental than revolutionary. Pop succeeds mathematically, and its features steer the game in a different path than the two that came before it. It’s not entirely apparent if it does enough to rival Donuts, but we wouldn’t put money on it. It’s a great game anyway, one that can easily amuse, frustrate, and reward players with large sums of money when their luck is in.
Pop relies heavily on its premium symbols, and royals often prove to be a significant detriment. They tend to just linger out and get in the way of balloon victories. The benefit of them is that when royal wins are taken away, only balloon premiums remain to make up the difference. This feature of the response system is helpful throughout the game, but it truly shines in the bonus round when it enhances the player’s odds of connecting more balloons with greater multipliers.
Building a pre-free spin multiplier by landing golden donuts was more interesting than the multiplier system overall. Nonetheless, it is exciting when a number of multipliers are operating in tandem with waves of balloon responses to accumulate a respectable prize. The maximum basic game payoff is 14,407x, and the maximum free spins payout is 66,960x, making this slot machine somewhat more lucrative than its closest competitor, Chocolates. As all past releases have fallen short of their maximum potential, it is unclear how much of that promise can actually be realized.
It’s safe to presume that gamers who enjoyed Donuts would also appreciate the calorie-free treats offered by Pop. While this is true, it is also true that Chocolates was met with less enthusiasm than many had hoped. Not because of any flaws in it, mind you. The chocolates didn’t strike the same chord as the donuts. Will Pop? be one of those games that does or doesn’t? The components for success are there: high volatility, enormous potential, and an attractive package. It will be fascinating to watch if it goes up in flames with the gambling throng or deflates like an old balloon left outside in the sun.
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