These are the 5 slots that we expected a whole lot more from but that ultimately failed us in 2018!
Last year we saw a large variety of fascinating and innovative games hit the market. As has been the trend in recent years, our thirst for volatility and jackpot-type potential seems insatiable. People simply love the thrill of playing games that could potentially dish out life-changing money at practically any time, and it’s that explosive potential most of us seem to be looking for in a slot nowadays. But with big promises comes even bigger disappointments and some slots just don’t perform anywhere close to what’s been advertised.
Of course, most of us are not gullible enough to expect 10,000x wins to come our way every Friday night, but for the casino enthusiasts active on forums, who frequent casino streams or subscribe to various casino related youtube channels, some of the games expected to dominate the big win sections are surprisingly absent.
Last year we published an article similar to this one and interestingly, it’s still relevant to this day. Though a couple of the games on that list still generate massive wins every now and then, they don’t appear do it as much as one would expect with the amount of play time they receive from punters all over the world bashing away. If you want to see examples of great performing slots, read our article on Casumo’s top online slot wins.
So anyways, here is our list of the 5 slots we expected a whole lot more from in 2018 but that just didn’t seem to live up to their promises.
5. Ark of Mystery (Quickspin)
Having released a whole series of high variance games during the second half of 2018, Quickspin undeniably caught our attention. Though none of them were even remotely close to being game-changers or trendsetters, most of the creations have been fun, colourful and captivating. One thing does bother us a bit, however. While the visual quality is on point, there seems to be something slightly off with the maths.
Quickspin is an extremely popular developer and considered to be one of the leading company’s in the field. Despite the millions of spins invested by players, for some reason rarely do we see any of their games listed in the mega win categories. Ark of Mystery is one such disappointment. It’s a great looking game that scored an acceptable 67% when reviewed by us, but the 6500x+ potential is nowhere to be seen and because of that, the motivation to play it has dwindled down to zero.
We’re not saying players are not winning on Ark of Mystery but when talking about massive wins anywhere close to its stated max potential, we have seen nothing of it. As a result, Ark of Mystery unfortunately positions itself as one of the greatest disappointments of 2018.
4. Tiger’s Glory (Quickspin)
Yes, another Quickspin slot and we could argue pretty much the same point here as we did with Ark of Mystery. A lot of big promises were made with Tiger’s Glory, boasting a max win potential reaching over 13,000 times the stake, but ended up falling flatter than a pancake.
Having been available on the market since the beginning of October last year, we are yet to see a win over 1000x. We still enjoy this 4096 win ways slot we must admit and love the sticky wild feature, although unfortunately it just seems incapable of generating wins above their older generation of slots. Therefore, the attraction has faded and for every disappointing session the chances of us returning is becoming less likely. Having combed through all the big win threads on the web, we could find no interesting wins to share with you.
3. Laser Fruit (Red Tiger Gaming)
Unlike Quickspin, we don’t have to second guess the true potential of the slots produced by Red Tiger Gaming. It’s definitely there and it didn’t even take a week before a player landed the max win of 10,000x on Laser Fruit. However, with a record-breaking 60 million win-ways on offer, we certainly expected to see a whole lot more massive wins from this slot.
The 100 bonus playthrough we did around the time of its launch wasn’t exactly encouraging either with a top win barely exceeding 800x. Urgh! One could always argue that it’s the nature of the beast and how super volatile games need to be designed (a fair point we shall add), and it might be unfair to compare it to some of the most popular slots on the market that receive a large chunk of the action, but we still can’t help to feel that it should have been able to accomplish more than this.
Either way, a game with a ridiculous amount of paylines in combination with a max win capped at 10,000x is a bit on the low end, especially when placed head to head against cluster games such as Jammin’ Jars with rather limited reel sets, yet still capable of generating 20,000x wins. We understand that it’s mostly just eye-candy but ultimately this setup made a lot of promises that it really couldn’t live up to.
2. Buffalo Rising MegaWays (Blueprint Gaming)
Buffalo Rising MegaWays is such a generic MegaWays creation that we more or less ignored it, not even bothering to give it a review. Being players ourselves, we still have opinions about it though and even if it’s basically just a clone of Diamond Mine and a few other MegaWays slots, this is the one we’re least likely to play. The fact that the base game payouts are horrendous for the most part and the bonus seemingly impossible to trigger (you’d be happy to win 50x if you do) this slot quickly goes out the window.
With that said, there are some 5000x win examples out there although extremely rare of course. It was a discussion on a forum that caught our attention regarding this particular slot with players sharing some rather weighty and detailed stats of the game, revealing just how vile it is.
1. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Big Time Gaming)
When it comes to Big Time Gaming, the expectations are always extremely high – undoubtedly more so than with any other provider. Being one of the most popular game developers in the industry we simply hold them to a higher standard. The hype surrounding the company’s November release and first ever branded slot Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was enormous and when the setup of the game was revealed, the hype was cranked up to 11.
Advertised as Big Time Gaming’s most volatile creation to date and with a max win potential of 50,000 times the stake, the big question was – what happens if you manage to gamble your way up to the 50 free spins. As impossible as it may seem, one player managed to do so within a couple of weeks following its release, but the outcome left everyone in utter disbelief, awarding the player with no more than 360 times the stake.
Having been available for only a couple of months, it’s still a bit too early to pass judgement but from what we’ve seen so far, or not seen rather, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has not lived up to the expectations. And the 50,000x win potential? We can’t even remember seeing a 5000x win on it shared on social media but please correct us if we’re wrong.
Do you agree with our list or not? Feel free to comment below what your greatest disappointments of 2018 has been!
