Orphan Organ

Orphan Organ: Slot Overview

Strap in players, experimentally minded casino game maker Shady Lady has designed a slot the likes of which many are unlikely to have seen before. No, really, that's not hype; Orphan Organ is a very unusual game both in theme and function. Shady Lady has come up with a new Meter Pays system for generating wins and married it to an odd story set far, far from planet Earth, where six orphan aliens are tortured into creating, um, music? Sounds baffling? Let's see if we can make some sense of it.

If you've ever wanted to know what a 'haunting carnival act from the farthest corners of our galaxy' looks like, well, now you know. The actual Orphan Organ is a sadistic contraption that enslaves alien orphans and prods them into producing noise by electrical shock collars. Yes, this is an online slot, not a provocative sci-fi series warning about the grotesque barbarism of alien species. Orphan Organ is Shady Lady's fifth release, and really, there is no telling what the studio is going to cook up next. From Devil's Finger to Brainwashed, to Oops' science run dangerously amok to a wild Office Party, who could have predicted we'd soon be on the galaxy's outer rim watching orphans get tortured in order to make 'music'?

Orphan Organ's gaming area is made up of 5 reels, each reel holding four regular positions and an Airlock. The game uses a Meter Pay win system rather than ways or lines, which collects matching symbols to create payouts - more info on this to come. Orphan Organ is highly volatile, with three RTP configurations, where 96.2% is the highest available. Shady Lady has included the Store, so there are loads of feature buys, while the base stake choices are 10 c to $/€100.

There are six regular paying symbols in Orphan Organ, awarding wins in batches of 8. They depict various creatures and are coloured blue, green, yellow, darker yellow, orange, and purple, and are worth 0.2x to 8x the bet for 8-of-a-kind. Wild symbols substitute for all regular symbols and increase the symbol count on meters by +1.

Orphan Organ: Slot Features

Key to the Orphan Organ deal is its Meter Pay feature, where each symbol type is linked to a meter. When symbols land on the reels, they are counted by their respective meters. When a meter hits 8 symbols, it pays out a fixed amount as described by the paytable, multiplied by its current multiplier. Winning symbols are removed from the reels, allowing new symbols to cascade in. If more than 8 symbols are collected, the extra symbols are held for the next cascade. Cascades repeat until there are no more wins on the reels. After each payout, the meter's multiplier increases, either by one or greater, depending on its level, which the Airlock feature can upgrade.

Airlocks

Landing an Airlock trigger symbol opens Airlock positions, and each opened Airlock awards one of four possible effects:

• Multiplier Increase - adds a value of 1 to 16 to the multiplier of a random meter. Before the increase is added, it is multiplied by the meter's level.
• Level Increase - multiplies the level of a random meter by x2 to x10 and the current multiplier level.
• Wilds - increases the symbol count on all meters by 1. Their effect on the meters is removed when they are consumed in a win or the Airlocks close.
• Harmony Face Hugger - attaches to a random meter, and all meters with face huggers are linked. Any time a meter is filled, and pays, all linked meters pay as well.

Free Spins

Landing 3 scatters trigger the Live in Concert Bonus. If all triggering scatters are normal, 8 free spins are awarded, rising to 15 if one of the scatters is a special scatter. During free spins, meter multipliers, meter levels, and linked meters are persistent. Hitting a +1 spin symbol awards an extra free spin.

The Store

The Store is where you head to activate the Bonus Boost at 1.5x, which increases feature trigger chances, or the Big Bonus Boost at 5x. Buying the bonus costs 73x, or the super bonus can be had for 272x the bet. As in other Shady Lady releases, it is possible to buy the top 3 results from 100, 300, or 500 spins costing 73x, 174x, or 260x the bet, respectively. Lastly, players can purchase Rare, Epic or Legendary Loot Boxes at a cost of 189x, 350x, or 580x the bet, respectively.

Orphan Organ: Slot Verdict

Some studios are happy regurgitating the same fish, joker, or Ancient Egypt stuff for the umpteenth time on the gambling masses. Others, like Shady Lady, prefer to smash the mould into a million pieces, pour the bits all over the floor and see what pattern they end up making. Orphan Organ was like that bit in the Hudsucker Proxy where Norville Barnes shows people a circle on a piece of paper, accompanied by 'You know, for kids,' and no one knows what he's talking about. Normally, you can imagine a studio coming up with an idea for a game and going from there; let's make something with dinosaurs, or King Arthur, or whatever. With Orphan Organ, it's difficult to imagine what the original idea germinated from. It's like H. R. Giger hanging out with Hieronymus Bosch listening to Tom Waits' Blood Money and Gregorian chant. Maybe the team had just watched Aliens, or… who knows?

One thing's clearer: players who prefer less mentally (and aurally) challenging, conventional slots may find it hard to fall for Orphan Organ. There's a feeling the Rainbow Riches crowd is going to hate the shizz out of this. But, so far, Shady Lady has continued to successfully pitch ideas at players who favour originality over warm, cosy familiarity, and the team doesn't seem afraid to potentially make, shall we say, mistakes on the way to whatever destination they may have in mind, like an unhinged Pied Piper leading gamblers somewhere weird and possibly wonderful they never knew existed. The bottom line is Orphan Organ is so peculiar that a demo is the only way to really get the full effect and make a final decision.

If there was ever a slot that had been designed by a species which wasn't human, it's Orphan Organ. To sum up, it's strange, it's a little confusing at first, a little uncomfortable at times, and a tad repetitive, but few, if any, slots build to such an oddly compelling cacophonic climax that's hard to look away from even when your ears are bleeding and your mind is on the verge of caving in - backed by 20,000x potential.