Doctor Dust

Doctor Dust: Slot Overview

Not judging a slot by its title is pretty good advice, and never more so than when dealing with developer Bullshark Games' post-apocalyptic release Doctor Dust. It's a name that created more questions than answers, while evoking images of what things the good, or bad, doctor might be up to. In this case, Dust is a plague doctor who lives in a hellish landscape of the future, where toxicity is a troubling menace, and life is lived on a very precarious knife edge. As well as pulsing with heavy levels of radioactivity, Doctor Dust is a cluster pays slot that collects winning symbols in order to deploy Grid Boosters, climaxing in free spins if you can collect enough symbols, in a sort of deadly, poisonous end-of-the-world Reactoonz type of way.

It looks as though Bullshark Games really got into the dystopian spirit when designing Doctor Dust, as it's more visually engaging than what the studio often puts out. A brief animation at the start of the game introduces us to Doctor Dust, an enigmatic masked figure, who twirls around with plasma pistols amidst a cloud of green smoke, before lingering next to the playing grid while the game is in play. The doc is part of a run-down, rusting, toxic world, and while Bullshark leaves no clues as to how the world reached this decrepit state, it does mention that Doctor Dust combs through ruins looking for components to unlock Grid Boosters. Not sure how that is going to cure any plagues, but never mind, the studio has nevertheless created a disturbing vision of the future to host gamblers willing to risk its poisonous atmosphere.

Doctor Dust is a cluster pays slot played on a 5x5 grid where winning combinations form when 4 or more matching symbols are adjacent to each other. The cascade feature removes winning clusters, collecting the symbols and causing a symbol drop to refill the reels. Cascades repeat as long as new wins appear. The RTP for the game is 96.3%, though a lower model is also out there, and the volatility has been classified as high. On the betting side, the minimum possible stake is $/€0.10 while the maximum is $/€75.

The symbol hierarchy includes J-A card royals, bottles, cans, masks, and radiation gear. Clusters of 4 matching symbols pay 0.2x to 2x the bet, while the biggest clusters are 15+ OAK in size, and they pay 20x to 75x the bet.

Doctor Dust: Slot Features

All winning symbols in Doctor Dust are collected by a collection bar next to the grid with 5 segments. Filling 1, 2, 3, or 4 segments with 8 symbols each unlocks 1, 2, 3, or 4 random Grid Boosters, respectively. When 5 segments are filled, the bonus round is triggered. Collection can continue past 40 symbols. Each extra 8 symbols adds +1 to the middle of the bar up to 4, indicating how many bar segments will be prefilled at the start of the bonus game. No more symbols are collected after having 4 in the middle. Symbol collection resets with each new base game spin.

Grid Boosters

• Clone - Clones a random row to 1 or 2 adjacent rows. Wild symbols are not replaced, and any cell multipliers on the cloned row are also copied or added to any existing cell multipliers.
• Switch - Selects 1 to 3 rows and transforms all symbols on them to match the first symbol of each respective row, except wilds.
• Wilds - Adds 2 to 5 wilds to random positions. Wilds may carry multipliers of x2 to x100. Multiplier wilds are applied as cell multipliers to their positions. If the cell already has a multiplier, the new value is added to it. Wilds cannot land naturally; only this feature can add them to the grid. They substitute all regular pay symbols.
• Power Line - Removes all symbols from a row and a column, then fills them with random regular pay symbols. Wilds are not removed. Each cell in the row and column receives a new or additional multiplier of x2 to x100. The intersecting position gets two multipliers.

Grid Boosters trigger one by one when the grid settles, with the grid cascading and settling after each Grid Booster is triggered. Cell multipliers apply to the wins they are part of and are added together if more than one is part of the same win. Multipliers are removed after being used in wins. When a cell with a multiplier is cloned, the multiplier also copies to the new cell.

Surface Search

Collecting 40 symbols in the base game triggers Surface Search, which is one spin with all 4 Grid Boosters. During the bonus, a collection bar tracks winning symbols in 4 segments of 8 symbols each. The number of Grid Boosters for the next spin depends on how many symbols were collected on the previous spin. Each filled sector awards 1 Grid Booster in the next spin. When at least 1 segment is filled, another free spin is awarded. When no segments are filled, the round ends. From the second spin onwards, the symbol count starts from 0. There is no limit to the number of retriggered spins.

Toxic Vault

Toxic Vault is triggered by collecting at least 72 symbols in the base game. It acts like Surface Search except the number in the middle is 4, so the second free spin is guaranteed to have all 4 Grid Boosters. Two free spins are awarded.

Feature Buys

In Doctor Dust, the feature buys are BonusHunt FeatureSpins costing 2x to make each spin 3 times more likely to trigger a bonus round, and the winning symbol collection starts at 4. Dust Raid Feature Spins cost 50x to start winning symbol collection at 8, guaranteeing at least 1 Grid Booster. Surface Search can be bought for 100x or Toxic Vault for 250x the bet.

Doctor Dust: Slot Verdict

Reactoonz was mentioned in the intro, and Doctor Dust follows a path laid down by that Play'n GO classic many moons ago. However, the slot that Doctor Dust evoked an even stronger association with was Bullshark Games's own Age of Seth. Both follow the same blueprint of cluster wins contributing to a collection meter, triggering features at set stages, before going radioactive in a free spin event when reaching the end of the collection pathway. It might be an emotional ride, should symbol collecting ebb and fade in and out of spins, triggering a booster here, teasing with an almost free spin there. Doctor Dust utilises the pieces it has been constructed with quite well to take gamblers on an entertaining journey of ups and downs, both in terms of gameplay and the toxic game world Dust finds himself locked in.

Highlights include the Grid Boosters themselves, which offer some fairly unique effects for this style of game. The cloning and switching boosters are unusual, but useful for pulling matching symbols into clusters. The Power Line does a similar thing, too, with the added benefit of adding cell multipliers to affected positions, which can be rather sizeable. Adding wilds is a standard move, but Doctor Dust hits them with multiplier values that contribute to cell multipliers, adding pep to a common modifier. All get brought together in a potential flurry of activity, firing off one after another at least once in Surface Search or at least twice during Toxic Vault. It can be very all or nothing, ranging from little more than actual dust up to a maximum of 12,000x the bet.

On the whole, Bullshark Games has designed a dynamic cluster-paying, winning symbol-collecting slot in the mould of Reactoonz, but one which breaks away to do its own thing. Chasing the one (maybe two or more) free spin round might break players if they're unlucky, but it may also blast them into a surprisingly fruitful dystopia; such is the potency of features Doctor Dust is able to unleash when it brings them to bear.