The Mask Slot
Released in 1994, The Mask is one of the highlights of Jim Carrey’s career, earning a worldwide gross of over $351 million against a budget of just $21 million and making a star out of Cameron Diaz with her first appearance in a movie. It’s been a long time coming, but there’s now a slot machine themed around Stanley Ipkiss and the magical Norse mask of Loki that he finds floating in the river of Edge City. Given amazing powers by the mask,the film sees Ipkiss and his dog Milo foil a dastardly plan to rob the bank where he works and take over the Coco Bongo nightclub.
The Mask video slot comes from NextGen Gaming, who have managed to secure the rights not only to the story, but also to actual images of the main actors, which is something that many slots game developers fail to do. Alongside Carrey, Diaz and Milo the dog, there’s playing card symbols, bags of cash, the film logo and some stunning bonus features that have clips from the movie central to the action. Spinners will be able to enjoy reliving scenes where The Mask bashes an alarm clock with a giant hammer, takes an airhorn out of his jacket, and where Milo gets hold of the mask and becomes a super-dog.
Based in London, with offices in Stockholm and Sydney, NexGen Gaming has been at the forefront of the casino games business since 1999, and in that time have released some of the most successful online slots, including 300 Shields, Crocodopolis, Foxin Wins and licensed titles such as Batman and Green Lantern. Some of these have been produced on behalf of other developers, but all of the NextGen casino games range share high returns, rewarding bonus features and innovative gameplay.
What’s Behind the Mask?
This 5-reel, 20-payline game has symbols spinning down transparent reels, so they seem to float against the background image of a dark street in Edge City. Landing either the 10, J, or Q symbols on adjacent reels from the left or right sides across any payline will see wins of 4, 6, or 10 coins paid out, while the K and A are each valued at 6, 10, or 10 coins, depending on how many reels they land on. The yellow hat worn by The Mask, and a big bag of cash, will each pay up to 25 coins, with Milo, the beautiful Tina Carlyle and hapless Stanley Ipkiss being valued at up to 50, 75 and 100 coins respectively.
The top prizes are paid out by The Mask himself, with his huge grin putting a smile on players faces when he awards them with 8 coins just for being on 2 reels across a payline, or 20, 50 and 150 when he’s seen on 3, 4, or all 5 reels. He’s also, perhaps appropriately, the wild symbol, so can act as all but the bonus icon to help complete winning combos.
The doors to the Coco Bongo club are a bonus scatter symbol that’s worth 50, 200 or 500 coins when it lands in any 3, 4, or 5 places in a spin, while also launching a free spins round.
Smokin’ In-Game Wild Features
Before any spin, there’s a couple of randomly triggered features that place extra wild symbols on the reels, accompanied by movie clips. If the alarm clock bounces around the reels, The Mask chases it down and smashes it into a 2x2 block of wild symbols in a random pace on the reels. While this isn’t guaranteed to create any winning combinations, more often than not, it will.
The In A Spin feature sees The Mask turn into a whirlwind, spinning across the game and turning other random symbols into extra wilds, while the By The Horn feature also blasts symbols into further wilds, although this happens at the end of a spin, not before. Another special feature that can happen once the reels stop spinning is the Mask Unmask, where Milo places the magical mask over a 3x3 section of the reels, turning any symbols of Ipkiss into wilds.
Dancing to free Spins
The bonus symbol opens the doors to the Coco Bongo club, where 10, 15, or 25 free spins play out against a backdrop of the stage. The number of bonus spins depends on whether 3, 4, or 5 symbols triggered them, but in all cases, wins that are created with the help of the wild symbol are multiplied by 2x, 3x, 4x, or 5x, while the frequency of the random in-game wild features is increased.
You can claim between 2 and 5 extra spins on top when just 1 or 2 bonus symbols land during the round, while any 3 or more retriggers the whole feature once any left in the current games have played out.
Edging Towards Wins
You’ll need a minimum stake of just 0.10 to play for real cash awards, and the maximum bet per spin is set at 50.00. Other betting options include an Autoplay function that can be set to spin the reels for up to 100 times, while anyone who doesn’t mind not actually winning anything can try out free The Mask video slots, but with a high return to player percentage, and the security of knowing that this slot is fully certified for fair play, most punters will want to spin the reels to win cash prizes.
The soundtrack is suitably fun and comes with some of the weird and wacky noises made by bouncing alarm clocks, crazy dogs and The Mask.
Comedy-Themed Slots
While NextGen Gaming may have The Mask, the rights to another Jim Carrey movie are held by Playtech, with the Ace Ventura – Pet Detective video slot being one of the mainstays of their range. It’s another game that features movie clips, plus there’s wild substitutions and a free spins game where you collect animals to earn multipliers, expanded wilds or extra random wild symbols.
If you like your comedy to be mixed with a little bit of horror, then you should take a look at the very weird Sharknado slot game from Pariplay. Based of course, on the hit series of cheap sci-fi movies, it looks at the serious issue of what would happen if man-eating sharks started flying through the air, chomping their way through various z-list actors.
The slot features a background image of jumping sharks, while the reels are filled with characters from the movies, plus wild shark symbols that multiply wins and an in-game helicopter attack that adds random wilds. Up to 20 free spins can be triggered by a chainsaw in this online slot that looks as bonkers as it sounds but has fantastic gameplay.
Does The Mask Slot Mask Any Issues?
If you liked the film, you will like this slot game, which is available to play across desktop and mobile optimised casinos. It’s nice to see bits of the film included in the gameplay and The Mask will pop up over the reels occasionally to deliver his signature ‘Smokin!’ line and it’s one of the best movie-themed online slot games that we’ve encountered in a long time. (Although we have to admit to a fondness for Sharknado as well.)
We found that the in-game features were triggered quite frequently, as was the free spins bonus round, although there could be a few spins between landing winning combinations, which is the trade-off for having such rewarding features.
