Flip Royale: Slot Overview
If someone was looking to start playing online slots, what game would be the best one to ease in with? Slots like Starburst are often put forward in these situations for reasons such as relatively chilled rules, math model, and thrills. Putting their hand up for consideration is software provider Quickspin, who has designed a game called Flip Royale just for this scenario. The goal with Flip Royale was to create something new casino game players could enjoy by providing a slot offering 'low volatility with strong features that hand out frequent wins.' If this sounds enticing, do read on.
A bit of imagination might be required to get the most out of Flip Royale. Users are invited to 'Step into a stunning building from the 18th century and feel like a king or queen for a night.' Sounds pretty fabulous, but the reality wasn't quite so magisterial. Flip Royale certainly won't hurt your eyes for looking, yet the image isn't as inspiring as it's made out to be, consisting mainly of a few chairs and a crimson patterned floor. A glowing gold lighting effect does add ambience, and if you like 80s era slow jams, you're going to dig Flip Royale's soundtrack. The audio side of Flip Royale's casino setting is quite fun to imagine. Close your eyes and picture a passionate muso in a grey suit and huge sunglasses getting absolutely soulful on a keyboard. Are you there now? Great, let's move on.
Putting jokes aside for a moment, it's time to run a fine-tooth comb over the numbers. The first thing to note is that Flip Royale is not a powerhouse of a game – nor is it trying to be. It is what Quickspin calls a low volatile game (though rated 3 out 5) built to theoretically fire off small and frequent wins rather than massive and rare ones. Potential is about as meagre as we've seen for some time, though RTP is comfortably in the average spectrum (though there are lower versions), generating a value of 96.2% - with around 70% going in the base game, the rest in free spins. The demo offers a bet range of 10 p/c to $/€100; however, high rollers might be thrilled to note the game sheet mentions stakes as high as €1,000.
Say the word flip, and coins probably aren't far behind. They certainly aren't in Flip Royal, where they are used as the premium symbols, while 10-A card ranks are the lows. Landing five matching symbols across one of the 10 fixed paylines is worth 1.5-3.5 times the bet for the lows and 5-10x the bet for the higher value coin symbols. Coin styled wilds can also appear on any reel, either substituting for regular pay symbols or creating wins of their own, worth up to 10x the bet for a line of five.
Flip Royale: Slot Features
Coins actually flip in Flip Royale and can lead to improved wins. When matching coin symbols land stacked, covering all positions on a reel, they trigger the Coin Flip feature. When this happens, each triggering coin is cloned which then gets flipped to a random position. If this creates a new stack of matching coins, then another copy of the coins is flipped to more random positions. If different symbol types trigger this feature on the same spin, they create wilds instead of new coins. Once the flipping stops, a win evaluation takes place.
Free Spins
If 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols land, players win 6, 10, or 20 free spins, respectively. The rules in free spins are the same as in the base game, except the Coin Flip feature is guaranteed to occur on every spin.
Flip Royale: Slot Verdict
Well, we didn't exactly feel like a king or queen the way the game sheet suggested we would, but Quickspin has achieved the rest of the goals they noted. To be honest, there are probably loads of games suitable for first-timers looking to get a taste of online slot machines' particular form of entertainment. But hey, for new players looking to dip a toe in online casino games, Flip Royale would probably make as good a start as any, really. It's got the sort of forgiving volatility and eventful gameplay it purports to have, so why not.
Of course, there are different definitions of the word 'eventful', and Flip Royale leans towards the controlled kind rather than the sort that flips its lid and goes bananas. The Coin Flip feature did hit often, going on to produce the fabled full-screen win during testing, which was amusing, keeping in mind, the most a full-screen win can ever be worth is 100x the bet. Pushed to its extreme (another subjective word), the most Flip Royale managed to produce in 100 million simulated spins was 433 times the stake. Hey, this is no Tombstone RIP wannabe by any stretch of the imagination, and it's not trying to be. With that in mind, perhaps for the sort of newbies Quickspin has in mind, potential like this represents a veritable king's or queen's ransom?
The good thing is Flip Royale isn't trying to make out that it's something it's not. Well, apart from the spiel about visiting a stunning building from the 18th century. Really, players could be anywhere from Casino de Monte-Carlo to a random pokie room out the back at the local boozer. Never mind, what matters is the gameplay, and in this, it's hard to argue with Flip Royale's life purpose as a stepping stone slot.
Quickspin's stated objective was to create a teaser slot for new players, which it has achieved through a combination of gentle mechanics, frequent features, and simple rules.
