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Lisa Michaels
Dr Wildshock Mad Loot Lab by Microgaming and Gold Coin Studios had me cook up some wins with an unhinged scientist in his eerie, rickety lab. This 5x5 reel, 10 payline, low volatility title has reels are filled with the tools and inventions of a deranged scientific genius and the Any adjacent pays system let me match 3-5 symbols horizontally or vertically, while the Rolling Reels mechanic removed winning combinations, allowing more symbols to appear in their place. The features include free spins and wilds and this title plays across all platforms.
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The game boasts a set of exciting features that are accompanied by eye-catching animations each time they are triggered.
Exploding Wilds
When I landed winning combinations with an exploding wild symbol involved, it would erupt in a burst of electricity and generate 2-4 randomly-placed regular wilds on the next cascade. If these extra symbols landed on existing wilds, they became multiplied wilds and similarly, if they landed on existing exploding wilds, they were also enhanced with a multiplier value.
This all made sense when I noticed that every time a wild was involved in a winning combination, it increased a win multiplier by +1. This multiplier would then reset to 1x after the Rolling Reels sequence ended. I was also able to use the Buy feature to instantly access free spins in exchange for 40x my stake.
Free Spins
A panel to the left of the reels would randomly display 3-8 wild symbols on every spin. These were the required number of wilds I had to collect to trigger the bonus round. Once I managed this feat, I was awarded 10 free spins where collecting another 5 or 6 wilds would retrigger the feature.
Dr Wildshock Mad Loot Lab slot is a nice return to form for a studio that has been playing it safe of late, and an engaging experience all-round. The last few titles that we’ve seen from Gold Coin Studios like Smooth Sailing did take the safe route as far as themes were concerned, so seeing the studio return to zany content like in Bushi Sushi is a relief, because they do it well.
Having the Rolling Reels, exploding multiplier wilds and a rising win multiplier working in concert created a truly exciting gameplay experience, but the base game and free spins round were identical, except for the addition of glowing ooze in the background visuals. This is unusual in online slots as differentiating the two would have given me more incentive to trigger free spins and made the game all the more engaging. I also wasn’t sure how feasible it was that I could ever reach the game’s top potential of $250 000 from a single spin but I had a blast trying nevertheless.
Lisa started off as a croupier at her local casino. However she found her niche in writing and has subsequently used her real-world gambling experiences to help produce and review the many online slots that are released monthly. Lisa also contributes to keeping you up to date with Canadian newsworthy stories.
