Jeff & Scully

Jeff & Scully: Slot Overview

Ever feel like humanity solves one riddle only to uncover three more branching off of the solution? If so, we might want to employ the services of a couple of unusual individuals going by the name of Jeff and Scully. You see, these two oddballs live away from so-called modern life in the depths of the Nevada desert, off-grid, spending their time trying to solve history's biggest questions. Examples include whether or not JFK is actually alive, why someone would fake the moon landing, and who really, like really, built the pyramids. Oh, and they also show up in an online slot bearing their names from software provider ELK Studios.

ELK Studios has classed Jeff & Scully as a 7x7, conspiratorial slot using a unique area win mechanic. We'll get to the nuts and bolts soon enough, but first, let's spend a bit of time laying the scene. Actually, to be honest, the scene is a little oddball itself. An eerie, mysterious soundtrack warbles across the airwaves, while up front, players' eyes are treated to a rather spartanly designed game world, where the cerebral duo sit staring at the gaming grid set before the purple, then red in free spins, lands of deep Nevada. It is rather conspiratorial, reminiscent of the fractured artwork found in the graphic novel 'The Department of Truth.' It certainly comes across as a place where weird ideas are dreamt up, or they come to life, or both.

To get in on the theorising, players are able to pick a base bet of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin and have access to five bonus modes from the X-iter feature. No matter how you choose to play Jeff & Scully, it has a theoretical return value of 94% and runs on a medium-high volatile math mode. Circling back to the area win mechanic, when 4 matching symbols land, forming the points of a rectangle or square, they create an area of winning symbols. The easiest way to visualise this is if 4 matching symbols land on each corner of the game grid, the full screen would become a winning area of the respective symbols. Winning symbols are removed from the gaming grid, causing a redrop, but multiplier symbols, instant pay coins, and unconsumed wild symbols remain sticky.

Eight regular paying symbols land throughout. These are chemtrails, cows, aliens, pyramids, JFK, moon landings, Scully and Jeff. Hitting a 4-symbol Area Win awards 0.05 to 1 times the bet, increasing to 5 to 25 times the bet for a 49-symbol win. Blocker symbols land a lot, too. They are valueless symbols. Speech bubble wilds substitute for any paying symbols to form winning areas. Wild symbols in the corners of an area are removed before any redrop. Also, an area with only wilds at the corners does not pay or trigger a feature.

Jeff & Scully: Slot Features

Working hand in hand with the area win mechanic are a group of feature symbols, two free spins bonus games, and X-iter.

Feature Symbols

When wins are created with multiplier symbols in the area, then the multiplier is applied to the area win. When more than one multiplier is part of the win, the values are added together. Should instant pay coin symbols find themselves in a winning area, they make an extra payout. For area wins of 24 symbols or more, multipliers or instant pay coins are increased. Hitting a Jeff win triggers the Jeff feature. When activated, it pays an area win for each symbol within the area – except Jeff or Scully symbols. A Scully Area win triggers the Scully feature, which swaps up to 3 pairs of symbols around to create additional wins.

Bonus Game

Collecting 3 bonus diamond symbols from winning areas in the base game triggers 10 free drops in the bonus game. The bonus game can be retriggered. During free spins, multiplier symbols and instant pay coins are sticky throughout the entire bonus game.

Super Bonus Game

Collecting 4 bonus scatter symbols triggers the super bonus game, which can retrigger. Multiplier symbols and instant pay coins increase their value on every free drop in the super bonus game.

X-iter

From the X-iter menu, players are able to flip to these game modes:

• Bonus Hunt – 3x the bet for a game round with a bonus scatter symbol already collected.
• Max Grid – 10x the bet to play with a full grid of symbols, excluding blocker symbols.
• Jeff or Scully – 25x the bet for a game round with a guaranteed trigger of the Jeff or Scully feature.
• Bonus – 100x the bet to trigger the bonus game.
• Super Bonus – 500x the bet to trigger the super bonus game.

Jeff & Scully: Slot Verdict

Gotta hand it to the ELK Studios team; they are a bunch of creative cookies. Everything about Jeff & Scully is new and unexpected. From its odd yet enjoyable couple of characters, mentalising some of history's famous events from the comfort of a Nevada desert hang out where no one can interrupt their thoughts. On a side note, if the moon landings were fake, filmed in a top-secret studio, as some say, wouldn't the Soviet Union have just made its own fake moon landing clips, as well? The Space Race could have ended up being a draw. For that matter, couldn't any country with a camera and the will to do so fake its own space footage rather than shell out billions for actual exploration? Apparently, the spirit of ponderation seeped out from the game during the test sessions while we were analysing Jeff & Scully's unique way of operating.

ELK Studios is an experimental lot, and Jeff & Scully puts an exciting new twist on the cluster pays style of action. It might take a few drops to get a handle on things, but it's kind of neat working out how everything fits together. Entertaining, too. Symbols drop in, eyes dart here and there, looking for matching symbols forming the corners of area wins. The area win idea is clever in itself, made more so by the incorporation of multiplier symbols and instant pay coins. The Jeff and Scully features are doozies, too, meaning Jeff & Scully has a ton of potentially exciting stuff to keep players guessing. Figure out the puzzle, or at least get super lucky, and the game is capable of paying out wins of up to 10,000x the bet.

With Jeff & Scully, ELK Studios shows again what an inquisitively experimental developer they are, out there blazing a trail with the best of them. Jeff & Scully is weird, it's wacky (in good ways), and it does things no other slots are currently doing. Conspiracy theories aren't for everyone, and Jeff & Scully probably won't be either, but in the right hands, this might be just the Rubik's Cube of a puzzle some gamblers didn't know they were looking for.