Royal Roller Slot Machine
Are you a low roller, a high roller or a royal roller? Whatever stakes you’re fond of playing with, you can grab a piece of the action with Royal Roller, the five-reel Genesis Gaming video slot. This glitzy old-school casino game is all about bright lights and plastic chips. While it’s not especially regal – there’s not so much as a king’s bejewelled crown on the reels – the fast-playing, non-progressive title is both colourful and clever. There are 25 paylines available on the 5x3 grid, and a jazz saxophone audio track accompanies your every spin, which can hardly be classed as a bad thing.
Genesis Gaming is one of the smaller software developers out there, but the US firm have certainly made their mark, boasting a portfolio of 80 odd games. Royal Roller probably isn’t their best, but it represents the brand admirably. You can play the game for as little as 0.01 per spin, or as much as 125. The theoretical RTP, meanwhile, is 97%.
Bright Lights, Big City
The first thing you’ll notice about Royal Roller is that it’s colourful. The reels are illuminated like Las Vegas on a Saturday night, with neon glimmering in every corner. This is a showpiece slot that’s fiercely proud of its OTT look.
The rules of the game will be familiar: players claim rewards whenever they find three matching symbols, formed left-to-right, on an active payline.
The regular control panel looks the same as ever, and it’s located along the bottom of the screen. There are tabs for AutoPlay, Lines, Coins, Bet Max and Spin. There’s also a ‘View Pays’ button: click here to take a look at the all-important pay-table. All wins, meanwhile, are recorded in the lower right-hand corner.
There are 12 symbols in Royal Roller, which is quite high for a game like this, although to be fair, exactly half of the icons are playing card symbols, from 9 through to Ace. These are the game’s lowest value icons, as you would expect.
Other symbols include a trio of lottery balls, a pile of poker chips, a hand of cards, a Royal Roller icon, a pair of dominoes and a wild. The most lucrative symbol is the one showing the royal flush. If you’re wagering one coin, you can expect a 1,000 pay-out for five, 500 for four and 50 for three. The poker chips are next in line, followed by the dominoes and then the lottery balls. For five in a line they pay 500, 250 and 125, respectively.
Wilds and Scatters
The wild, which is simply the word ‘Wild’ printed on a craps table, substitutes for all other symbols save for the scatter. When it does stand in for other icons, it doubles the resultant pay-out.
The scatter is the Royal Roller symbol, and if you land three or more, you are granted five free spins as a reward. Hitting scatters also starts a roulette free spin bonus game with an additional wild reel feature. Essentially you’ll be shown a spinning roulette wheel, which will gift you between one and four entirely wild reels. The wild reels can only be one, two, three and four, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that wild reels can lead to some seriously impressive wins.
When your five free ones have been spun, the prize will be counted up and you’ll return to the base game.
As well as leading to the bonus feature, scatters are also linked to values in the pay-table. Unlike other symbols, scatters pay in any position across the reels. Even if you’re only betting a single coin, you can win 50 for five in a line, 10 for four, five for three and two for two. All scatter wins are multiplied by the total wager. Sadly, the free spins feature cannot be re-triggered.
The Verdict
Royal Roller is a solid video slot, one that hearkens to old-time Vegas, when Sin City meant poker chips and dominos, not Cirque du Soleil and Hard Rock residencies. While the game could be improved if there were more free spins up for grabs – a maximum of eight is pretty stingy, truth be told – the inclusion of a bonus feature should be applauded. Royal Roller is far from a royal waste of time and competes well with other games from this developer like Gods of Giza.
