All details about the latest Netent slot!
Although announced in Q1 / 2017, it took until today to get a first glance at the latest Netent creation, named Emoji Planet™. Scheduled to be launched on 23rd August 2017 to coincide with the release of the movie, we anticipated a highly entertaining, funny and quirky game that would lighten up our slotting days.
The first look after loading the game had my jaw dropping. Two “grannies” line-dancing through the screen! Really, Netent? Well, let’s look past that “faux pas” and move on as the first impression might not be what the game will actually produce.
Fans of Gemix, Golden Ticket or Viking Runecraft will immediately screem “clone”, “copy” or similar. The pay mechanic is indeed similar with what Netent is calling Cluster Pays™. Avalanching symbols falling into place, with minimum five horizontally or vertically adjacent symbols needed for the lowest pay, the top pay being awarded for 30 symbols. The symbols from a winning combinations are removed and replaced with new ones for potentially more wins. Until now, exactly similar to the above mentioned games.
Pay symbols are a mixture of emoji symbols such as blue hearts, rocket, bomb, pizza slice. Top symbol is a big yellow smiley face, awarding the top pay for the game of 500x bet for a cluster of 30 symbols. To spice up the game, Netent has given it five bonus features which are activated by collecting 12 symbols of the those indicated on the right of the screen.
TRTP of this medium variance game is 96.4% with bet sizes ranging from $0.20 – $200, adjusted with the usual Netent controls for bet level and denomination. Emoji Planet™ will be available for play on desktop, mobile and tablet across all OS platforms.
Emoji Planet™ is 5×6 grid video slot with cascading symbols, Cluster Pays™, regular and sticky Wilds and five bonus features. Minimum five adjacent symbols are needed in a cluster for a winning combination. After the win is paid they are getting removed and new symbols fall down to produce potentially more wins.
Emoji Planet Bonus Features
The game comes with no less than five bonus features for added excitement and higher win potential. On the right of the game window are five Emoji meters displaying the low paying symbols. A winning combination of one of the symbols on a cascade will illuminate part of the meter with the amount of symbols in the cluster. Twelve symbols are needed to fully illuminate the meter and award the respective bonus feature once the last winning cascade in the current spin is completed.
- Bomb Feature: 8 random tiles are on the reels are destroyed and a coin win of 5x – 100x bet for each destroyed symbol is awarded
- Pizza Feature: a 3×3 mega symbol, excluding the Wild symbol, is randomly place on the reels
- Kiss Mark Feature: 3 sticky Wild symbols are randomly placed on the reels. Each has three lives with one live being lost when it forms part of a winning combination after an avalanche. The round ends when all three lives are lost
- Rocket Feature: a stack of 10 Wild symbols is randomly place on or above one of the reels to produce guaranteed winning combinations. After each avalanche the stack moves down, ending the round when no more Wilds are visible
- Two Hearts Feature: the feature is only activated when no more winning combinations land on an avalanche and no other features are to be activated. When it is activated, it multiplies the current win by the amount of times the meter was filled plus one.
First Verdict
Is this new Netent creation the holy grail of slots? To be honest, I was not that impressed. First, design and graphics look like they been put together in a hurry. Secondly, the maximum win is just 500x bet, meaning this is yet another low – medium game which will give long play sessions but never any super big wins a la Dead or Alive. Third, those feature were sure hard to trigger, it took me nearly 30 minutes to finally collect once 12 symbols on a spin and then it paid a mere 17x bet.
Well, I will have some more spins on it over the next days, it might just make me smile in the end but the real test will come once it is released when it remains to be seen how players will react to it.
