Boo

Boo: Slot Overview

Aussie slot maker Big Time Gaming might have dropped cloned reels, aka The Final Countdown, or cloned symbols, aka Book of Gods, in the past, but the popular game designer isn't exactly renowned for dropping stacks of cloned slots. However, to get in on the carved pumpkin season, the studio has gone and made a spooky, Halloween-style, ghostly version of its balloon-centric slot Pop. The title is Boo and follows in the 4x4 footsteps laid down by the likes of Donuts, Chocolates, and of course Pop.

A misty graveyard in the middle of the night is where Boo lays its scene. Carved, glowing pumpkins lie scattered about the ground, and an atmosphere of menace smothers the screen like a turtle neck sweater that's slightly too small. Boo has ghosts drifting about the place, well, on the game grid, but they're closer to the Casper variety than heinous spectral beings haunting the daylights out of the living.

Boo might look like a neatly packaged wee slot, yet statistically and in practice, it is anything but. For starters, the math model is highly volatile; actually, 'very high' are the words Big Time Gaming uses on the game info sheet, though RTP has remained the same as before at the respectable value of 96.54%. This figure applies when betting 10 c to $/€10 per spin or when buying the bonus round. Yes, this time, it is possible to buy free spins, of which there are two options to choose from. One is quite pricey for a Big Time Gaming slot.

Lining Boo's 4x4 gaming grid is 256 ways to win. All winning combinations start from the leftmost reel, and low-value symbols require at least 4 OAK to create a win, while the high pays award cash for hitting 3 or 4 OAK combinations. The lows are classic BTG 9-A shiny royals, while the highs are green, blue, crimson, and purple Ghost symbols. Four-of-a-kind royal wins are worth 0.2-0.4 times the bet, whereas 4 matching Ghost symbols in a way pay 0.8 to 2 times the stake. The reaction system explodes winning symbols off the grid and drops down symbols to replace them. If a new win results, the reaction mechanic triggers again. Scatters are not affected by reactions.

Boo: Slot Features

There's not much overly spooky about Boo's features which include reaction wins, wilds with possible multipliers in the base game, free spins with sticky multipliers, and bonus buys.

Wild

Multi-coloured ghost wilds appear on reels 2, 3, and 4. They may be used as a substitute for any regular pay symbol. In the base game, wilds may reveal a multiplier of up to x4. Wins are multiplied by the shown multipliers for each wild that substitutes in the win.

Free Spins

Hitting 3 or more pumpkin scatters in any position triggers 12 free spins. Each position on the grid in free spins has a multiplier positioned below regular symbols, which persists till the feature ends. Multipliers may increase during free spins. Each time there is a win with Ghost symbols or wilds on an initial spin (not a reaction), one or more winning positions have their multiplier increase. The increase is by a random +1, +2, or +3, and the amount the multiplier increases improves by +1 for each retrigger. At the start of free spins, one or more positions that held the triggering scatters get multipliers starting at x2, x3, or x4. All other positions begin on x1.

Hitting 3 or more scatters during the round awards a further +3 free spins, as well as increasing the multiplier on one of those positions by +1, +2, or +3. Multipliers only apply to Ghost symbols and wilds. All wins are multiplied by the multipliers shown on each Ghost and wild present in the win.

Bonus Buy

Players are able to buy 12 free spins for 90 times their stake or 24 spins for 500 times their stake.

Boo: Slot Verdict

As far as the progression of Big Time Gaming's 4x4 slots go, Boo is a decidedly sideways step. The gameplay stays the same, no better or worse than Pop, with an enormous divide carved between the base game and the bonus round. Not only because the features are different between those two phases of play, but winning potential is like night and day. According to the game sheet, the most players are able to pull out of the base game is 705x the stake, while the maximum exposure clocks in at 47,050x the stake. BTG slots often list a difference between base and bonus games in terms of winning potential, but not usually to that extent.

Such is the power of those sticky multiplier values in free spins then, which clearly have the ability to pop, or boo, as it were. Makes sense that Boo would ship with a bonus buy then, to leapfrog the base game and dive straight into those sticky multipliers. Their growth is arguably helped by the fact Ghost symbols make wins of 3 as well as 4-of-a-kind. Twenty-four spins provides quite a lot of space to rack up chunky multipliers on the grid, too, in theory. In practice, there are no guarantees, and 500x the bet is not cheap either. A possible sweetener, though, is that the help screen within the game mentions a max payout of 200,000 times the bet when buying 24 free spins, which might be all the motivation some gamblers need to partake.

Added all together, Boo isn't exactly Big Time Gaming's best work, nor its most innovative - by a long shot for the latter. There's a feeling fans of Pop will be a bit disappointed they're basically getting a cloned repeat with a scary skin rather than a follow-up with newer gaming elements to experience. However, if you liked Pop, you'll likely warm to Boo's ghosty, tightly tuned performance as well, especially those who like to go big on bonus buys.