Gold Coin Studios, a Microgaming partner, took the ‘experimental scientist’ theme and ran with it with their slot machine Dr. Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab. Having a protagonist that lives on the edge of scientific understanding allows production companies to do something different. Gold Coin has mostly succeeded in this regard by erecting a rapid-fire game replete with vibrant hues, eccentric characters, gliding design elements, and a generous helping of promise.
The action of the game takes place in a laboratory, and the setting is deceptively sparse. A stone wall serves as a repeating background behind the grid, while a collecting meter and multiplier occupy the right-hand corner of the image. Gold Coin might have made the scenery more interesting or bizarre, but they chose not to in favor of the gameplay on the reels.
The game is played on a 5×5 grid, and winning combos are formed using an any adjacent pays structure. The Rolling Reels feature (basically a cascade mechanic) is activated when three or more identical symbols appear in a horizontal or vertical line from any beginning position. The game’s 48.29% hit rate results in a default return value of 96.26%, therefore this occurs frequently. It’s Gold Coin’s biggest potential to yet, and it’s also quite unpredictable.
Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab, playable from 20 p/c to £/€10 per spin, relies solely on wild symbols and eight standard pay symbols (no scatters are employed). For a line of five, the first four symbols are magnets, flasks, an electrical device, and a ray gun, each of which is worth 1x the bet. Brains in vats, a frog-headed mouse, a robot, and Dr. Wildshock are the premium emblems. A victory of five premium symbols will award a payout of two to fifteen times the wager.
Featured Slots in Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Laboratory
The features of Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab aren’t subtle and tend to make frequent appearances. Because of their significance, wilds, Rolling Reels, and a win multiplier all bear the Doc’s name. Even while free spins are a possibility, they aren’t as appealing as they would be in a standard video slot.
Reels That Roll
The Rolling Reels feature is triggered whenever a win occurs and the corresponding symbols are subsequently removed from play. To keep the feature going until no new winning combination arises, new symbols fall into the empty spaces.
Wilderness Explosion
The game’s wilds come in two flavors: the standard yellow variety and the red explosive variety. Both can stand in for any other bonus icon. When a winning combination contains an exploding wild symbol, that symbol will
provide the following cascade between two and four more wild symbols at random. Wilds that are awarded can stack with other wilds already on the board. Exploding wild symbols can be doubled when awarded wilds land on them.
Furthermore, each wild card utilized in a successful combination boosts the win multiplier by +1. During a Rolling Reels sequence, the win multiplier remains at its current value, but returns to x1 after the series concludes.
Bonus Turns
A box with three to eight wild symbols appears to the left of the gaming screen. This is the minimum amount of winning wilds on the current spin needed to activate further free spins. A total of 10 free games are yours to keep once you’ve collected enough wild symbols. It may seem strange, but during free spins, all wins still require 5 or 6 wilds for the collection to trigger an extra 3 free spins.
Offer to Purchase Feature
If you’re dying to play for free, you may pay 40x your bet to skip the bonus round and get straight to the free spins.
The Slot Results from Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab
Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab demonstrates that Gold Coin has progressed past the stodgy design aesthetic of games like Aquatic Treasures. Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab is Gold Coin’s finest game to date, and it’s not because making a less boring game was impossible. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a candidate for slot of the year, but it certainly has character, and the gameplay benefits from an obvious flow—and not the accidental kind of flow that the company stumbled across, but rather the deliberate kind that was built into the game.
High hit frequency, any adjacent payout, Rolling Reels, and a large number of free spins all contribute to the rapid pace. Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab specializes in a select few areas, but excels at them all. The sheer volume of the frantic striking, cascading, and bursting action serves to keep you interested for a long. Wilds that explode into more wilds and win multipliers are rather common. As a result, there were many instances of bonus spins.
One possible flaw is shown upon activating the bonus game: there is little to no difference between it and the main game. In particular, the lack of innovation in the bonus round is a little letdown, making Dr. Wildshock’s Mad Loot Lab feel a bit one-dimensional. Since all game stages are identical, there is no need to activate or purchase them despite their low price. Gold Coin’s greatest win to yet is 25,000x the stake, but the relentless way Dr. Wildshock Mad Loot Lab cascades away spewing out wilds like there’s no tomorrow can be fun as well as beneficial.
The gameplay may get stale in Dr. Wildshock Mad Loot Lab, and it would have been wonderful if the free spins had some sort of variation.