According to some sources, if humans could harness every bit of sunlight which hits the Earth and convert it into usable energy, we'd only need one hour of sunshine to power the world's economy for a full year. It's questionable whether humanity has the will or the technical capability to hit anywhere near that mark. Something's gotta give, though. According to Tom Murphy in Scientific American, if the world sustains energy growth of 2% each year, within 2,500 years, humanity will be 'consuming energy at a rate equivalent to the power output of all 100-billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy'. Part of the problem is that no matter the power source, the Earth's surface would become hot enough to boil water within 400 years and as hot as the sun's surface in 1,000. Hopefully, the maths is a little off.
With that cheerful thought in mind, let's turn our focus to an online slot from Pragmatic Play titled Peak Power - an electrifying game which harnesses the power not only of buzzing electrons but the hypnotic powers of line multipliers. Some are big line multipliers, too. In some ways, a rather simple-looking game, though packed with animations, Peak Power's grid appears like it's housed in a metal container bolted to a wall. Ripples of electricity flare up here and there, emphasising the 'Power' part of the title, while an unusual EDM soundtrack makes up the sonic side of things. It's a game that favours function over form, which might have been done on purpose to put players into a mechanical frame of mind.
The numbers running along the sides of the 5-reel, 3-row gaming panel indicate the presence of 20 fixed paylines and which line(s) happen to be selected for the multiplier feature. Highly volatile, Peak Power has a trio of RTP settings, and checking the paytable will reveal whether you've got the 94%, 95.01%, or 96.02% model. This value applies when normally betting at 10 p/c to $/€100 per paid spin, but it does alter when buying the two bonuses.
Peak Power has an odd mix of classic slot symbols and custom-made ones, with there being 7 pay symbols in total. The lower value three are single Bar, double Bars, and triple Bars, while the higher paying group consist of four, err, shapes. Landing a winning line of five matching symbols awards 0.4 to 1.5 times the bet for the Bar symbols or 2 to 10 times the bet for the premium shapes. For the sake of clarity, Peak Power does not have wild symbols in either its base or bonus game.
Let's go back to those numbers we mentioned lining the side of the game grid. At random on any spin, multipliers can appear attached to specific paylines. The payline numbers help keep track of these. Whenever a winning combination hits on a payline with an active multiplier, the winning total has the multiplier applied to it before being paid out. The possible multipliers in the base game are x2, x5, x10, x100, x200, x300, x400, x500, or x500.
The electric atom thingy is Peak Power's scatter symbol. It appears on all reels, and landing 3, 4, or 5 of them awards 3x the bet and 10, 12, or 14 free spins, respectively. During free spins, a multiplier of at least x5 is attached to all paylines. Randomly on any spin, higher multipliers may appear attached to random paylines. In free spins, these higher multipliers may be x10, x100, x200, x300, x400, x500, or x1,000. Free spins cannot be retriggered.
Depending on the market, it may be possible to buy instant access to the free spins round. If so, then players can spend 100x the bet to buy a regular free spins trigger where each payline has a minimum x5 multiplier. Or spending extra, at 300x the bet, buys Super Free Spins, where every payline has a minimum multiplier of x100 attached to them.
Peak Power is a brute force game that not only packs big line multipliers but unleashes them on a regular basis. Generally, they come in small numbers at modest values, though, like the unpredictability of a lightning strike, something massive can appear from nowhere, and if you're lucky to connect it with a decent line win, then the results can be pretty neat. Naturally, doing so will be tougher in the base game since that's where multipliers are more limited, yet trigger the bonus round or buy it, and each and every payline has a multiplier attached to it. Again, there's a good chance this will be one of the lower possible multipliers, but again, lurking about like dark matter are those unicorn values of up to x1,000.
This did make using the buy function tempting while reviewing Peak Power to see what the game could power out. Particularly so the 300x Super Free Spins option, because at first, it felt like doing so would be like shooting fish in a barrel. How could things not go well with an x100 minimum attached to every payline? The first trigger seemed to confirm those thoughts. However, following bonus rounds weren't always quite so exhilarating, and the game has a knack for dropping minor wins or all-out dead spins, softening the effectiveness of even the most potent multipliers. Still, the line multipliers can be thrilling when something cool happens, and the game is able to crank the dial all the way up to its win cap of 10,000 times the stake.
Despite the initial flush of positivity, it didn't take long to realise the reality that Peak Power is a gambling machine, not a fusion reactor; therefore, not everyone will get more out of it than they put in, as per usual. While fairly limited in what it can do, as in, there aren't a huge number of features, when Peak Power is firing off sparks left and right, it could be quite electrifying.
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