For a while there, Pragmatic Play's compadres Reel Kingdom were dropping some of the more peculiar slots to cross the review desk. Releases like Star Pirate Code, Cash Elevator, and Tic Tac Take spring to mind, and while they might not be as trippy as a Crazy Tooth Studios mind-bender, they were pretty odd. Then, after hitting pay dirt with Big Bass Bonanza, the studio dropped a bunch of fishing slots that disrupted the online gambling landscape. Proving that the team is still more than capable of creating oddball slots comes Demon Pots, which feels like a return to the studio's earlier 'what the hey is this' days.
With a name like Demon Pots and all those flames on screen, presumably, players find themselves deep below ground in a warm part of the underworld. Wherever we are, the inhabitants appear to be fans of ska as a track done in the mode of The Specials blasts across the airwaves. Players meet just one inhabitant of this realm, a red-skinned, pointy-horned, demonic-looking chap who appears on the wild symbol. Instead of acting devious, though, he's pretty useful for not only substituting pay symbols but triggering certain features, too. The audiovisual experience is classic Reel Kingdom: kinda cheesy, kinda low budget, odd, but not necessarily in a good way. To put it nicely, Demon Pots is an acquired taste.
Burning away beneath the game's surface is a highly volatile (4.5 out of 5) math model knocking out an RTP of 96.01% when playing 'normally' or when buying free spins, bumping up a titch to 96.02% when using the Ante Bet. When on, the Ante Bet increases the base bet by 50%, increasing the chance of activating various bonus modes. Regular bets go from 40 p/c per spin all the way up to $/€240.
Demon Pots' gaming area is a 5x3 aligned space with 40 paylines on which to land winning combinations of 3 to 5 of a kind. For lows, there are 10 to A card royals, paying 1 times the bet for a 5 low pay symbol win, then horseshoes, a trident, bundles of cash, a sack of cash, and some gold stuff, worth 1.6 to 10 times the bet for a 5 OAK hit. As stated, the demon character is displayed on the wild symbol, substituting for all symbols except Coin symbols. In the base game, wilds can only appear in the very centremost position of the grid.
Features time, and here we have Coins, Win Spins, free spins, and buy free spins, which sounds simple, but there are quite a few rules to get to grips with.
Coin symbols land bearing values of 0.2 to 2 times the total bet. Whenever a wild symbol lands at the same time as Coin symbols, the value of the Coin symbols is awarded. Whenever a wild symbol hits, after the spin, it may throw fireballs at the pots above the reels, sometimes activating one or more of them. When the Coins pot is activated, 6 Coin symbols with values of 0.2 to 1x the bet are added to the reels and collected. When the Super Coins pot activates, 6 coins with values of 0.4 to 2x the bet are added to the reels and collected.
When the Win Spins pot is activated, 6 respins are awarded. For the duration of the feature, the wild symbol remains locked in place in the centre of the grid. All respins are guaranteed to generate a win either from winning combinations, collections, Coins, or Super Coins, randomly. Activating the Win Spins pot again during the round awards an extra 6 respins.
When the Free Spins pot is triggered, 6 free spins are awarded – again, the wild remains in the centre of the grid throughout. Any of the pots can be activated randomly during free spins. In free spins, it is possible to land a fully stacked wild on reel 5 or reels 4 and 5. If a stacked wild hits on reel 5, another can land on reel 4 later. Fully stacked wilds are sticky until the feature ends. When a fully stacked wild is on reel 5, all Coin value collections are multiplied by x3. When a fully stacked wild is on reel 4 and 5, all Coin value collections are multiplied by x6. If Win Spins are triggered during free spins, any sticky wilds are cleared from the reels for them, but the multipliers still apply to any Coin collections. When returning to free spins, the fully stacked are placed back on the reels. Activating the Free Spins pot during the round awards an extra 6 free spins.
Players may buy the free spins bonus for 100x the bet. When doing so, the Win Spins pot is activated, then at the end of them, the Free Spins pot is activated.
It's never a good sign when you're reviewing an online slot and recoil at the thought of suffering through more torment by scoring a retrigger during a bonus round. So it was in Demon Pots, which is indeed an unusual slot. Good unusual, or bad unusual, is up to the individual player to decide, of course, but it wasn't a game which tugged on many heartstrings around here for a repeat performance. It's a bit like Pragmatic Play's slot Hellvis Wild if all the polished refinement had been sucked out of it. No doubt Demon Pots has its own unique personality, but going against the grain doesn't automatically mean others will want to get on board.
As well as personality, Demon Pots does have fairly original gameplay, sort of, and there are parts that some may find attractive. For instance, buying the bonus round feels, not saying it is, but it feels like decent value since you get 6 Win Spins as a warm-up with free spins to follow. Win Spins don't necessarily translate to big wins, though, and being an online slot means not every bonus buy will end in the black. Coin values, for one, are pitiful on their own, maxing out at 2x the bet. Hardly warranting the 'super' part of Super Coins. Quite a few Coins can rain down, though, that's something, and it is technically possible to increase Coin values when sticky full-stacked wilds are present on the reels.
Winning potential isn't too shabby either at 6,000x the bet, but it is tough to visualise that figure being threatened by what Demon Pots has to work with. Happy to be proven otherwise, though. And so, while it was strangely heartwarming to see Reel Kingdom return to form by producing something oddly out there, it just wasn't great odd, and the thought of ever playing it again wasn't an exciting one.
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