Accessible Slot Machines Suck!
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Mobile Gaming Month : [part 3]
Gambling, Lots of fun. Wait I can do better. Gambling its slots of fun. Get it? Get it? It is a bad pun. That I stole from some where else. You know what screw you guys.
Introduction
So this week I am taking a look at 3 games that are all very similar. Fruitpot, Spoken slots and Fruit Machine.
For those who haven’t worked it out these are accessible slot machines.
Modern slot machines are far more then just simple fruit machines but sadly no accessible versions of the much more advanced slot machines exist. So here we are looking at 3 fruit machine games.
Game Play
As all of these games are based on classic Fruit Machines, let us have a brief run down of how these work before we jump in to each 1 individually.
A classic fruit machine had 3 cylinders called reels each with pictures on the outside. When you put your money in, you pulled the handle and the reels would spin. When they stopped if the 3 symbols shown were a winning combination you would win money. Otherwise game over.
So this basic concept has been taken and turned in to smart phone games and it is that which I have looked at this week.
Spoken Slots
Created by Norman Pettus
Ok as the worst of the 3 I thought we should start here. This game has a paid and a free version.
So clearly I went with the free version. Lets stop here the free version of an app is meant to make you want the paid version. This free version wanted to make me delete the app and never think of it again!
4 buttons can be found on the screen:
Score: tells you how many chips you have.
instructions: Give you some very fucking basic instructions.
bet raises the number of chips you bet per turn by 1.
Spin: well spins the reels.
That is it. that is all this game is. press spin have it tell you 3 pieces of fruit and then tell you if you have won or lost.
Nothing else to this game and it is as boring as it sounds.
If there is more to the paid version my suggestion is either have a way for me to see that in the app. or just don’t offer a free version.
It functions so 1 out of 10 for this app.
Fruit Machine
did I really just spend a dollar 50 on this app.
The answer to that is yes. I wish I hadn’t but this is at least slightly better then spoken slots.
the game play is still the same but we have a few extra features in this app that are nice.
For starters this one you don’t have money or chips you have credits and you win points. You have 20 credits and you have to try and get as many points as possible.
How ever it is still just 3 reels of spinning fruit.
A few other things are nice abut this app. The ability to turn off the fucking terrible back ground music is nice. being able to check a list of the fruits and the combinations you can unlock are also nice.
Another feature that is of interest is if you get 2 of a kind you can hold those 2 fruits and just spin the last reel again. this isn’t much but it offers a slight variation in play so I will give some credit where credit is due.
The last thing is that you don’t start with all the fruit. As you play through you unlock more fruits which offer a variation in the prizes and will presumably allow you to get higher scores.
This app is certainly better than spoken slots but is it worth the dollar 50 price tag.
I personally don’t think so, However that is mainly because Fruitpot is free and better. But we will get to that in 1 moment.
4.5 out of 10
Fruitpot
OK so this game offers the best game play experience of the 3 I looked at.
So lets break this down in to a few different areas.
The reels work slightly differently. Instead of just showing the symbol the reel stop on. You can also see the next symbol on each reel. this becomes important because of the bonus items you have to work with in this game.
You start with 2 bonuses but unlock more as the game goes on. But I will talk about just the first 2.
Nudges are the first and I have found most useful. As I said above you can see 2 symbols on each reel. if you use a nudge on a reel it moves the reel 1 slot moving up that second symbol. This can really help when you are trying to make winning combinations.
An example would be you have a banana on both reels 1 and 2. reel 3 might be a cherry but a banana is in the second slot. use a nudge on reel 3 and suddenly you have 3 bananas and you are winning cash.
the other bonus I will talk about is a hold. This allows you to hold a symbol and spin the other 2 reels. This is useful later on when you get better symbols unlocked so for example you might want to hold a horse shoe symbol and hope the other 2 reels might be lucky enough to land on them as well.
Gambling your winnings is another way this game breaks up the game play of spinning the reels. on big wins you have the option to play memory and triple your winnings or just gamble and go double or nothing.
Other little mini games like these exist but I am yet to unlock them so I can’t talk about them.
Finally lets talk about shopping. This is what truly sets this game apart from the 2 I talked about above.
When you look at the shop menu there is a hole mess of stores over 10 I believe. in each shop you can buy 5 different items. Once you have purchased all the items in a store you unlock another symbol that goes on the reels.
These new symbols can do a lot of different things. They can give you more nudges, more holds, new little games or just give you more chips.
The reason I find this sets it apart so much is it really gives you something to work for. You need to win to get more chips to buy more items to unlock more things.
You might think after all this I am saying that this is a good game. The simple truth is when compared to the first 2 games it is. But over all it really isn’t that entertaining and got boring pretty quickly.
6 out of 10
Final thoughts
So what can we take away from all this. Well honestly if you want to play fruit machines games exist to play them. Are they worth playing? not really no. Could you pass some time playing them? Yes you certainly could.
I wouldn’t recommend any of these to some one looking for something to do. You might argue I am being to critical of these games. All of them seem to function reasonably well. unfortunately they function well just what they do isn’t really worth it in the end.
Go read a book, or play Swamp or something. Much better use of your time.
Conclusion
As always leave a comment below if you have anything to add. Check out my thoughts on Dice World next week here on the blog.