Crank It Up

Crank It Up: Slot Overview

Here's a quick, completely unscientific quiz. If you walked into a party blaring loud music, would you a) politely ask the host to turn the volume down, or b) leap on the stereo system and crank it up even louder? If you answered A, congratulations, you are officially old, over it, and cranky, while those who choose B are officially young, hip, and with it. Fortunately, none of that was serious, but for gamblers who are young, hip, and with it (or would like to pretend they are), come join us as we critique Pragmatic Play's louder-than-loud online slot, Crank It Up.

Like beauty, what's 'cool' really is in the eye of the beholder, and the modern-day Fonzi standing to the right side of Crank It Up's screen is, depending on your point of view, either a real trendsetter or a total doofis. Fortunately, he has zero bearing on the actual gameplay other than to make it look better, or worse, or whatever. The music could be an acquired taste, too. Some might indeed be reaching for the volume controls to crank the funky beats up, while others may be diving for the mute button. It's all been done in the spirit of fun, most likely, but watching businesses and corporations try to be 'hip' can be cringey. If you're getting those vibes from Crank It Up, eh, let's just go with it for now.

Taking centre stage is a 5-reel, 3-row gaming matrix awarding regular wins left to right from the leftmost reel across its 20 paylines. Something about the look, colour, and visual layout brought Pragmatic Play's slot, Hellvis Wild, to mind, but we digress. To start cranking, users are able to pick a stake from as low as 20 cents up to a high of $/€240 per spin, and a feature buy is available to skip the dry toast base game. Highly volatile, Crank It Up's default RTP is 95.95%, which is a little lower than Pragmatic Play usually does.

Snazzily written J-A playing card icons are Crank It Up's low pay symbols, awarding 2.5 to 5 times the bet for a 5 OAK hit. Next are shutter shades, headphones, footwear, and a microphone as the highs, worth 15 to 30 times the bet for a 5 OAK hit. Then there's the ghetto blaster wild symbol, appearing on reels 2, 3, and 4. The wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the scatter.

Crank It Up: Slot Features

The base game has nothing to report back on, so let's leap right to the free spins round. It is triggered when 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols land to award 10, 15 or 20 free spins, respectively. During free spins, whenever a wild symbol hits, it highlights the position it landed in. If a wild lands on an already highlighted spot, the multiplier increases on that spot in this order - x2, x3, x5, then x10.

When all free spins end, 3 additional special spins are awarded. For the special spins, all highlighted spins transform into sticky wilds, carrying the multiplier that was reached on the spot during the normal free spins phase. New wild symbols cannot land during special free spins. The multiplier applies to all winning combinations that pass through it. If more than one multiplier is part of a winning combination, the multipliers add to each other. Lastly, managing to land 3, 4, or 5 scatters during the normal free spins section awards an additional +10, +15, or +20 free spins, respectively.

Buy Free Spins

Since the base game is pretty meh, players may buy access to the free spins feature, triggered randomly on a spin by 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols for 80 times the bet. The RTP when buying free spins is 96.03%.

Crank It Up: Slot Verdict

Whether a self-obsessed cringe fest or a tongue-in-cheek jibe at fads and fashion, Crank It Up is a slot with a split personality. In this case, there exists a chasm of a divide between its repetitive feature-less base game and its frame fiesta free spins. The action gets even more granular since it's the final 3 additional special spins where Crank It Up really gets the chance to, err, crank it up. The cranking is largely dependent on how many frames litter the screen and how many of them lead to multipliers. Get a bunch, and you could be laughing. Fail to do so, and the thought of having to soldier on through the base game again, with its low-energy activity, might be a mood killer.

While Crank It Up has its moments, players who do like the idea of a highlighted positions, end-of-feature special spins concept might do well to take a look at Relax Gaming's slot Wild Chapo. Like Crank It Up, Wild Chapo builds up certain overlays on the screen, bombs in this instance, then on the last spin, wilds and wilds with multipliers pepper the screen in order to cause mayhem. The multipliers in Wild Chapo multiply each other, instead of adding, making the game overall much more explosive than Crank It Up in all phases. Pragmatic Play's Sugar Rush 1000 is another slot powered by a highlighted position, rising multiplier feature that has performed well on the market and one that is far more volatile.

One piece of evidence that Crank It Up can actually crank, sorry, gotta stop using that word, is its 10,000x the stake win cap. Yeah, you're going to want to see a lot of framed positions going into special spins to attempt striking the cap, but it would appear to be a technical possibility for those willing to wait through Crank It Up's less interesting parts to get to its more promising sections.