Outsourced Payday

Outsourced Payday: Slot Overview

Ah, payday, what a roller coaster of emotions that day can be as the money flows in then just as quickly flows out to cover bills, rent, mortgage, groceries, and all the rest of the blood-draining, spirit-crushing vampiric institutions we're required to satiate in order to exist in society. From the heights of Croesus to participating in medical experiments for ramen money in a single day… This (exaggerated) emotional roller coaster ride of ups and downs has been distilled by developer Nolimit City's Labs people and bottled in the experimental online slot (is that even the right word?), Outsourced Payday.

Outsourced Payday's backstory explains how the Outsourced factory's production is up 2,000% after all the workers were fired and replaced by claws. The best bit, the claws don't complain about the working conditions. A classic capitalist fairytale. Outsourced Payday returns the scribbly, in a good way, cartoon graphics, pairing the visuals with tip-top audio work to drop players into a game world where playfulness tinged with punishment abounds.

As Nolimit City games tend to do, Outsourced Payday comes with a lengthy list of optional betting options, though players must pick a base stake of 20 c to $/€100 per game round. The RTP varies when activating the buy modes, but the maximum baseline value is 96%. It's not quite as volatile as a lot of NLC's beasts, though - this one has earned a 6 out of 10 medium rating for volatility.

It won't take more than a nanosecond to work out that Outsourced Payday is not your typical rows and reels slot. In this game, a single row of 5 symbols slides onto the screen from right to left for claws to potentially pick up, potentially drop. As well as plenty of no-value symbols, there are 7 symbols depicting various 'prize' objects worth from 2 times the bet up to 1,000 times the bet for each individual symbol.

Outsourced Payday: Slot Features

Outsourced Payday is easy to work out, and here's how the game goes. At the bottom of the gaming area is a conveyor belt displaying 5 symbols per spin. A claw can pick up one of the symbols randomly from the conveyor belt. If the claw picks up a symbol without dropping it, the player wins the corresponding prize. The claw does not pick up anything with a zero multiplier value.

Claw Spins

A claw picking up the Claw Spins bonus symbol without dropping it awards 3 Claw Spins. Bonus symbols picked up during the bonus award a further +3 spins. During Claw Spins, only symbols with multipliers greater than 2x will appear.

Nolimit Bonus Buys

By opening the bonus buy menu, players are able to activate these modes: Claw Spins - for 35x the bet, players get 3 Claw Spins with 1 Claw; Clawier Spins - for 150x the bet, players get 3 Claw Spins with 3 Claws; Clawiest Spins - for 400x the bet, players get 3 Claw Spins with 5 Claws; God Mode - for 997x the bet, a MAX WIN symbol is guaranteed to land on the conveyor belt.

Nolimit Booster

Outsourced Payday's Nolimit Booster options include these: xBet - at a cost of 6 times the bet, a bonus symbol is guaranteed on the conveyor belt; Safe Claw Mode - at a cost of 1.6 times the bet, symbols picked up by the claw cannot be dropped; Three Claws, One Spin - at a cost of 4 times the bet, players get 3 claws per spin; Five Claws, One Spin - at a cost of 10 times the bet, players get 5 claws per spin.

Outsourced Payday: Slot Verdict

Like 'em or loathe 'em, it's hard to deny the Nolimit City Labs folk are pushing boundaries. They did so with Outsourced Slash Game, followed up in the unusual Munchies, and have kept the ball rolling with Outsourced Payday. This release is obviously thematically linked to Slash Game and slightly further back to the original Outsourced slot. Where Outsourced and Nolimit City slots, in general, came with all manner of bells and whistles, Labs creations like Outsourced Payday are quicker to the point, have less fussing around, and chuck a ton of betting options at a relatively simple game mechanic.

This claw reaching down to grab stuff gaming mechanic can be your best friend or your worst enemy. On the negative side, one of the worst things about Outsourced Payday is the way the claw is not guaranteed to keep hold of the prizes it grabs (unless playing in Safe Claw Mode). Dropping an x100 is bad enough; try dropping a MAX WIN symbol, especially after dishing out 997x for God Mode. Ouchy. It's worse than manoeuvring an actual claw machine IRL and having it drop that Pop Toy your nephew really wanted and watching him tear up. For the record, the max win, with a 1 in 1.3 million spins probability, is 10,000x. On the flip side, Outsourced Payday is a bit gimmicky but not overly so due to it having more depth than a crash game, for example. There is a bonus round to bust into, and having multiple claws picking things up (and not dropping them) in the base game or in Claw Spins can be amusing.

Outsourced Payday was one of the more easily enjoyable of the Labs releases so far. The rules are simple, it's built from quality materials and wasn't as punishing or repetitive as a crash-style game. Outsourced Payday's creators have stacked the game with betting opportunities, a bit of depth, and smatterings of the Nolimit City humour we've come to appreciate.