Happy 2024 everybody!
As we ring in the new year and look forward to another 365 days of slot action at Wheelz, let's also take a look back at a few of the gaming highlights of 2023, a year that saw the arrival of some hotly-anticipated sequels as well as some fresh surprises.
Razor Returns by Push Gaming
Push Gaming emerged from the depths once more with the long-awaited sequel to their massively successful and notoriously volatile Razor Shark.
And Razor Returns didn't disappoint, capturing the feel of its prestigious predecessor while adding its own thrilling new features and an edgy visual update.
Mystery Symbols return, appearing in stacks of 5, nudging down one position on each spin, and opening to reveal either a pay symbol, wild, or Golden Shark Symbol. In the Free Spins feature - which is triggered by the appearance of 3 Torpedo Scatters - the spins continue as long as there are Mystery Symbols in play and each nudge sees the feature's win multiplier increase by +1. If the Free Spins feature is triggered by 4 or 5 Torpedo Scatters, the multiplier will start at x5, or x10, respectively.
The Golden Shark Symbols activate the Razor Reveal feature, where they spin to reveal any Instant Prizes up to x5,000 the bet, Multipliers up to x10, special Collector and Converter Symbols, or Nudge Symbols that keep those all-important Mystery Symbols stacks in play for longer.
Rip City by Hacksaw Gaming
Rip City is a grimy homage to classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry. This time though, the cat and mouse duo featured in Rip City are called Ro$$ and Maxx respectively.
The cat is an Expanding Wild Symbol, his jaw drops in typical cartoony style when he appears, expanding the symbol across all lower positions on that reel if doing so would create wins. The game also features Standard Wild Symbols which grant the multipliers when the cat expands through them.
Two bonus features are on offer. The first, the Ro$$ Bonus Feature is activated when 3 scatter symbols appear and consists of 10 Free Spins with an increased chance of Expanding Wild Symbols appearing. 3 more scatters landing during the feature awards an extra 4 Free Spins to keep the action rolling, while 4 scatters unlocks the Maxx Bonus Feature.
The Maxx Bonus Feature can also be activated from the base game - also by landing 4 scatters - and offers 10 Free Spins again. This time though, once an Expanding Wild Symbol lands on a reel, that reel is lit up, guaranteeing another Expanding Wild lands there on every subsequent spin.
Money Train 4 by Relax Gaming
Yet another instalment in the mighty Money Train slot series pulled into the station this year, this time taking the action off-world to a barren planet undergoing terraforming. The max win offered by the game has also become even more stratospheric than before, a x150,000 max win compared to Money Train 3's x100,000 max.
This train is armed to the teeth with features, including - as always - the Money Cart Bonus Round, a trademark of the series, which is now packed with more special Feature Symbols than ever before - far too many to possible list here - for an even more wild and dynamic experience than previous Money Trains. Old favourites return, like the Necromancer, which brings already used Feature Symbols back into play, as well as new characters, like the Arms Dealer which converts up to 4 pay symbols into Feature Symbols.
Re-spins also make a return, triggering randomly on any spin, this time the symbol with the greatest number of spaces on the grid becomes sticky and the re-spin produces only blanks, multipliers, or more of the sticky symbol. Re-spins end when no new symbols appear.
Zeus vs Hades: Gods of War by Pragmatic Play
The mighty Pragmatic Play delivered a hot take on the well-worn theme of Greek mythology this year with Zeus vs Hades: Gods of War.
The slot offers two experiences in one, with players able to choose whether to ascend to the peak of Mount Olympus to hang with the king of the gods, Zeus, for some high volatility gameplay, or plummet to the depths of the underworld for an even higher volatility time with Hades himself.
The visual presentation is among the studio's best work, with the backdrop changing entirely depending on your choice, from cool airy blues for Olympus to rich fiery reds for the infernal underworld. Zeus and Hades make appearances themselves duking it out in the game's Expanding Wild Symbols, which award multipliers as high as x100 the bet to all winning lines that pass through them.
The game's Free Spins Feature is a simple but nonetheless satisfying affair. 10 spins are activated when 3 scatter symbols appear on the reels and Expanding Wilds become sticky when they land.