Scatter Monsters

Scatter Monsters: Slot Overview

The game sheet for Scatter Monsters from provider Quickspin raises an interesting question; 'Do you love festivals or think they're hell on Earth?' Take Woodstock, for instance. It might have gained near-mythical status, but dig around online for a bit, and it doesn't take long to find negative feedback on the legendary festival, such as the rain, mud, shortages of food, less-than-optimal bathroom facilities, and mounds of garbage. On the other hand, its long list of acts included titans like Jimi Hendrix. Tough one.

Anyway, the festival in Scatter Monsters is certainly hellish, literally. It's set in hell, possessing a kind of Wild Cauldron vibe. The character symbols in Scatter Monsters are 'culture-loving monsters' here to enjoy a five-day festival known as Scatterbury and come in three forms – vampires, zombies, and demons. The music amplifies the mood, being a heavy, grinding, Black Sabbath-y sort of number, accompanied by energetic sound bursts when something exciting happens on the grid.

The grid itself is a 6x6 panel using a scatter pays system to create wins. When at least 8 matching symbols are in view, in any position, a win is formed, and the symbols comprising it are removed from the reels. New symbols drop to replace those removed, and this tumbling process will repeat until no new scatter win hits. Running the festival is a medium volatile math model (rated 3 out of 5), tuned to three RTP settings, with 96.08% being the highest available - values can be found on the paytable.

Other paytable info includes symbols and what they award. Pay symbols are divided into colours and types. Vampires are blue, zombies are green, and demons are red. Symbols are categorised like this because each colour is connected to a Soul Meter, covered below. For the lows, there is an Impish Vampire, a Hatchling Zombie, and a Puny Demon; the mids are a Vampire, Zombie, and Demon, while the highs are a Large Vampire, Huge Zombie, and a Grand Demon. As for payouts, an 8-9 of a kind scatter win is worth 0.2-1.5x the bet, while scatters of 26-36 pay 0.75x to 10x the bet. Lastly, wild symbols can substitute for any pay symbol in Scatter Monsters, which is playable on any device, supplying stake levels of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin.

Scatter Monsters: Slot Features

Scatter wins, and Heaven Gift symbols are the keys to Scatter Monsters' features such as Soul Meters, Symbol Upgrades, Colour Removals, free spins, and win multipliers. Here's how it all works.

Soul Meter

When winning scatters hit, the symbols forming them are collected in the Soul Meter that relates to their colour. Filling the meter triggers its modifier extra as such;

• Vampire Soul Meter – the blue meter requires 20 souls to fill. When filled, it awards a Symbol Upgrade where all low-pay symbols of all colours are upgraded to their higher value version. If no low pays are in view, the mediums are upgraded.
• Zombie Soul Meter – the green meter needs 40 souls to be filled. When filled, the Colour Removal is awarded, removing all symbols of a random colour and storing them in the respective Soul Meter.
• Demon Soul Meter – the red meter needs 60 souls to fill. When filled 8 free spins are awarded, plus 1 free spin for every 25 Demon Souls over 60.

The Zombie and Vampire meters can be overfilled, meaning their feature can trigger multiple times. For instance, if 40 souls have been collected in the Vampire Meter, the Symbol Upgrade will be awarded twice. All meters reset between spins.

Free Spins

During free spins, filling the Demon Soul Meter with 60 Demon Souls adds +1 free spin, plus an additional free spin for each batch of 60 souls after that. At the end of a free spin, any souls left in the meters are converted into a multiplier which is applied to the win on the spin. Multipliers have values of x1, x3, x5, x7, x10, or 20 for 0-15, 16-30, 31-50, 51-70, 71-100, or 101+ remaining souls, respectively.

Scatter Monsters: Slot Verdict

In Quickspin's game sheet for Scatter Monsters, players are enticed to 'get access to the VIP room in hell, where you can mingle with Satan and other superstars. Maybe you'll even get his autograph?' It's kind of like when a friend or family member says something outrageous in public, and the room goes into silent 'huh?' mode. Then they try and palm it all off with a giggle like it was all a big joke, yet you can't help but wonder… After all, they sounded pretty serious…

Anyhow, let's move our focus back to the game itself, which has several conflicting personalities going on. Naturally, there's the fire and brimstone thing we touched on above; then there's the math model, which might seem a little underpowered for the subject matter, though not as noticeably so when compared to its max win of 1,493 times the bet. Scatter Monsters proved to be a little tough to crack at first. Scatter wins were poor, filling the meters didn't occur too much, and the balance felt like it was slipping into some sort of abyss of its own. Then, the first free spins trigger brought the balance back to roughly where it started from. Free spins did prove to be a lot more eventful than the base game. At first, it seemed a shame that meters were not persistent between spins. However, the hit rate seemed to be higher during the bonus, leading to more meter fills and some useful multipliers from the leftover souls. Nothing extraordinary took place, and as mentioned, all-time wins probably aren't going to happen in Scatter Monsters due to the limited potential anyway.

With Scatter Monsters, we take another look into the Quicksin psyche, or at least, a deeper look into one unusual side of it. It'll be interesting to see what sort of audience will take to Scatter Monsters. It's not a monster-paying slot, though it didn't exactly seem a 'friendly' one either. In in other words, there was a high-risk (relatively speaking), low-reward balance to it. At the end of the day, perhaps it'll be the heavy metal, down in a hole, chilling with a menagerie of beats, type theme which will prove to be the thing that makes or breaks Scatter Monsters.