Aqua Slots
Picture the scene – you walk into the kind of bar that, pre-ban, would have been smokey, the smell of booze still hanging heavy in the air. Grabbing a drink (and paying for it, obvs), you spy a slot machine in the corner. Walking over to it, suddenly it dawns on you – it’s based on a kind of children’s bath toy theme, or at least under-the-sea as seen through the eyes of an infant.
Doesn’t quite make sense, does it. But then this is no once-smoke-riddled bar. Instead, it’s Aqua Slots, a 3-reel, single payline gambler from GameScale that takes a visual cue from real life, pull and spin, old school gambling machines. Which makes the whole brightly coloured aquatic thing slightly jarring.
Nevertheless, nobody said proper betting needed to be proper stuffy- sometimes it’s good to have a little fun. On that count this effort certainly does the job, immediately inviting you in to play, albeit with some pretty crudely drawn images. That said, nobody won any money on a slot with good art work, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Davy Jones’ Locker
On the face of it then there’s not much to explain. You have three reels, and you need to spin these and try to match up three of a kind. The pictures are a shell, something that looks vaguely like a yellow octopus, a fish, starfish and that’s about it.
None of the pictures look particularly impressive, in face somewhat dated, but they do their job, although perhaps using different colours would have helped differentiate them. Then again, there’s not much need to do that as if you get a match the game will tell you, and if there are any misunderstandings about how to play, you can toggle Tips on or off in the very bottom right of the screen.
Taking a Splash
When the game initially loads up, you will be asked to choose the size of your denomination to play with. This basically adjusts how much each of your bets is going to be worth. This can also be changed by using the poker chips at the very bottom of the screen. The higher the value on these, the higher the value of your potential winnings.
Unlike many gamblers, three reel machines usually just have one fixed payline. A payline is a predetermined pattern, on which the winning matches must land. Aqua Slots is no different to most 3-reelers – there is just one fixed payline which you will always play with. As such there’s nothing to worry about aside from jumping in and getting involved.
Winning in the Water
As you begin to play Aqua Slots there are a few things we haven’t mentioned that you might start noticing. Firstly, the ‘Insert Bills’ part of the actual machine that will undoubtedly start flashing incessantly. You need to keep topping up from your overall pot to the credits in the machine, as if reaching into your pocket to pull out some change, and dropping the coin in the slot. All very realistic.
Secondly, you don’t actually need a full house of three matches to win something, although the payout is pretty disappointing if you don’t. Even so, it’s possible to just land one or two fishes on the reels and get something back for what you have put in. Hopefully, though, it won’t come down to that.
For Die Hard Fans
If Aqua Slots is anything, then, it’s a stripped to the bones gambler that relies on the gamer’s pure hunger for winnings. There’s nothing to get distracted by, and nothing to really make you stick around when the going gets tough. Except one thing, of course.
For the kind of people this is really aimed at – the die hard – there’s that familiar sense of satisfaction that comes with beating the machine that will undoubtedly sell this one. Thankfully, it’s not possible to place many successive bets quickly, so if you fall into that demographic fear not, it won’t break the bank without you realising. But then it definitely is one of those games that makes you want to have another go – it’s just so easy to follow, and with few pictures on few reels, winning is easier than most other gamblers too. And let’s face it, we all love winning.
