Canine Carnage

Canine Carnage: Slot Overview

Proving that slots set in dystopian futures are still hot stuff comes Canine Carnage from Swedish software provider Play'n GO. Canine Carnage is set in a world where doggies appear to have taken over and cruise around in souped-up vehicles while listening to throbbing techno. Sounds a little bit (or a lot) like ELK Studios' Nitropolis concept? Yeah, we got that impression, too, along with a bunch of other references as well. That might have been more of an issue if the rest of Canine Carnage hadn't been so well designed. As it stands, Canine Carnage actually has some pretty exciting entertainment to offer the right punter; let's check it out.

The game starts with a monstrous vehicle careening through the desert, rolling into a junkyard like the locomotive from Cash Truck or Money Train 3. Play'n GO has gone to town with the pixels to create a bizarro world of canines, some of which look part cyborg, and vehicles cobbled together with whatever parts could be salvaged from the scrap heap. An all-over-the-place dance track makes the perfect accompaniment to the messed-up world players find themselves thrust into, and the game makes the sort of first impression where we kind of couldn't wait to see what happens next.

Canine Carnage is played on a 5-reel, 3-row matrix where ways to win start at 243 but expand when symbols start getting split. It's a medium volatile slot, playable on any device while offering bets of 10 p/c to $/€100 per paid game round. To win, payouts are triggered when adjacent matching symbols land from left to right, starting from the first reel onwards.

As for symbols, 10-A card rank tiles appear as the low pay group, all awarding 0.4x the bet for a five-of-a-kind win. Next, we get four futuristic canine characters as the high pays, worth 1.2 to 3 times the bet for five-of-a-kind. Another symbol is the flaming-eyed skull wild, appearing on all five reels. Wilds substitute for all pay symbols and are worth up to 5 times the stake for a five wild symbol winning way.

Canine Carnage: Slot Features

Ah, one more thing about the wild. Wilds are sometimes referred to in the game as Splitter Wilds. This is because when they hit, they split certain symbols to the right of them in the same row into two. Royals, characters, Golden Bones, and wilds can be split. Collectors, scatters, or multipliers cannot be split. It is also possible for 1-3 wilds to be added to the grid at random.

Multiplier

Multiplier symbols can hit on any spin or be randomly added to the grid. They come in values of x2, x3, or x5 and all wins are multiplied when multipliers are in view. If more than one multiplier is present on the reels, the values are added together before they are applied to any wins.

Golden Bones and Instant Prizes

Golden Bones can land anywhere on the grid and display a cash prize when they do – their maximum value is 5x the bet. Also, 3-6 Golden Bones can randomly be added to the reels. If Golden Bones land at the same time as a Collector symbol, their values are awarded to the player.

Bone Spins

Landing 3 flaming petrol can scatters in view triggers 6 Bone Spins. During Bone Spins, regular pay symbols are removed from the reels. Now, when Golden Bones land, their values are instantly awarded, plus they are added to the Cash Pot above the reels. When the Collector symbol lands, whatever is in the Cash Pot is awarded. In addition, on each Bone Spin, 1-3 features can be active, such as 3-6 Golden Bones being added to the grid. Multipliers may appear, and these are accumulated throughout the feature. Whenever the Collector hits and the Cash Pot is awarded, the accumulated multiplier is applied to its value. Lastly, it is possible Splitter symbols land as well. These split any Golden Bones that land on the same row to the right, doubling their value. 1-3 Splitter symbols may be added to the grid.

Canine Carnage: Slot Verdict

Canine Carnage blasted onto the screen and never let up until the review was done. It's a mash-up of series, slots, and features such as the Nitropolis range, the Money Train games, a bit of Top Dawg$, with a sprinkling of Nolimit City's xMechanics chucked in for good measure. Such a melting pot of components might have gotten messy, but Play'n GO has flexed its world-building talents to paint a visual and sonic feast that requires little effort to slip into.

What Canine Carnage does with its features and gameplay isn't bad either. There's a fast flow and features trigger quite often, but this is a different sort of ride to those offered by the heavyweight slots it kind of resembles. When you get used to the thrillingly ravaged world of the canine dystopia, the gameplay might not feel quite so hard-hitting by comparison. The base game has a good pace to it, though, with plenty of Golden Bone collects and frequent symbol slicing. Free spins are quite inventive as well, in a way. Nothing paradigm shifting like a Money Train 2 event, but there's more going on in Bone Spins than just a regular hold 'n win sequence of events. The outstanding audio-visuals really save the day because had they been weaker, then the gameplay probably wouldn't have felt half as good. The RTP also seems fairly evenly distributed with frequent decent hits in the base game and with most bonuses paying around 50-150x.

That brings us to what is potentially Canine Carnage's biggest bummer. Despite the colossal number of possible ways to win and the multipliers, it was a surprise to see a max win figure of 3,000x the bet. Dunno, it just didn't sit right, what with all the talk of carnage, the ways, the flames, the razor discs, and the overall excellent Mad Max meets doggies presentation. Leaving aside the possibly disappointing max winning potential, Canine Carnage was quite a fun game to play. Play'n GO might have found inspiration in numerous places, but if so, it's picked some excellent things to be inspired by. And Canine Carnage is by no means a copycat slot. Along with the possible inspo, the studio has added a few new ingredients of their own, then wrapped it all up in one outstanding package that looks, sounds, and plays like a charm.