Loner

Loner: Slot Overview

Loner is a word with a variety of connotations. On the positive side, you've got your lone wolf types charming the masses by their mysteriously inbuilt coolness. On the not-so-great side resides the troubled loner type, living in squalor, unkempt, unloved, alone, and not by choice. Now, given that Loner the slot has been crafted by Nolimit City, there is no second prize for guessing which route the controversial studio has taken. Yep, Loner features a definite non-sigma main character whose friends can be heard only in his mind and where TV has taken the place of partner, pal, and prophet.

A classic Nolimit City fringe society character, in other words, and the tone of Loner is set at the home screen where a message proclaims a presentation by 'C.O.C.K. TV'. Subtle? No. But subtlety is not a word Loner is likely to reach into its vocabulary to find very often. This one's all about immediate gratification, scoffing down pizza, chugging a 'Fat Shake', surfing to find the most titillating show on the tube. It's also a slot that harkens back to an earlier era, before streaming, on-demand TV, or the internet, really, back when you had to rewind video tapes to watch them again. Heavy pixelation in parts and bleeping 8-bit sounds amplify this crusty fling to the past, where everything has been layered over with a thick, grimy coating of crud.

Statistically, Loner is an extremely volatile slot (10 out of 10 rated), dropping a default RTP of 96.06% when betting 20 c to $/€100 per spin. At a cost of an extra 50% on the bet, the xBet guarantees a Monitor symbol on the leftmost real. Or, activating the xBet Double for 30x the bet, players are guaranteed Monitor symbols on both the leftmost reel and reel 3. Locked within a grubby, stained television set is a 5-reel game grid, dropping 3 rows of symbols onto each reel and evaluating wins via a 243 ways to win pay system.

Cut out ransom note 10-A digits are Loner's low pays, worth 1 to 1.25 times the bet for landing a line of five matching royals, while its high pays are Reel Duck Tape, Order 1 For 2, It's Cardiolicious, Banging Deal!!, and the main character. Hitting a combination of 5 matching high pays awards 1.25 to 5 times the bet. Lastly, when wilds are in view, they substitute for any regular pay symbol.

Loner: Slot Features

Loner might not have many friends, but it has a lot of features. The extras include Big Wilds, Monitor reveals, various bonus games, feature buys and much more.

Big Wild

The 2x2 or 3x3 Big Wilds may land fully or partially stacked on reels 2 to 4 on any spin. xSplit symbols split Big Wilds in all its affected positions.

Monitors

Monitor symbols land only on the leftmost, middle, and rightmost reels. If 1 or 2 Monitor symbols hit, they reveal one of these modifiers:

• Wild - a regular 1x1 wild.
• xSplit - splits all symbols to the left and right while doubling the value of that symbol. It turns into a wild during a split but does not split Monitor symbols.
• Infectious xWays - transforms into normal pay symbols of size 2 to 4. Infects all occurrences of that symbol on the reels, changing them to sizes 2 to 4 as well. Infected symbols may also be split by xSplits.
• Max Win - triggers the Max Win.

If 3 Monitor symbols land, they reveal one of the following bonuses: Pin The Win, Tick Tick Boom, Shoot Shoot Duck, Max Win.

Pin The Win

Triggered when 3 Monitors show Pin The Win. In this bonus, a Pin The Win logo drifts around a gaming area. When the logo hits a corner of the area, the win shown there is awarded and the round ends. Hitting any other position awards a random win multiplier of 1x to 500x that is applied to the final awarded win. Wins displayed in the corners range from 1x to Max Win.

Tick Tick Boom

Triggered when 3 Monitors show Tick Tick Boom, players choose a target to blow up. A vehicle travels along to reach the picked target where a reward of 5x to 1,000x the bet is revealed, or even the Max Win.

Shoot Shoot Duck

Triggered when 3 Monitors show Shoot Shoot Duck. This game starts with 5 shots, which are automatically made by the game, not the player. Shooting ducks collects awards:

• Symbols - awards 1x-1,000x the base bet.
• Bomb - collects all visible awards when shot.
• Ammo clip - increases the number of shots back to 5.
• Van - increases its value each step by collecting all awards visible in the gaming area.
• Max Win - awards the Max Win when shot.

The round ends when there are no shots left or the Max Win has been awarded.

xGOD

xGOD is the name given when players collect a Max Win symbol triggering a Max Win. This can be done by Monitors revealing a Max Win symbol in the base game, by shooting a Max Win symbol in the Shoot Shoot Duck, collecting a Max Win symbol in Pin The Win, or revealing Max Win in the Tick Tick Boom.

God Mode

Monitors may (or may not) reveal M, A, X symbols awarding the Max Win.

Nolimit Bonus

The bonus buying opportunities in Loner are Tick Tick Boom for 75x the bet, Pin The Win for 90x the bet, Shoot Shoot Duck for 185x the bet, God Mode for 2,604x the bet, Lucky Draw 60/30/10 for 127x the bet, or Lucky Draw Deluxe for 247x the bet. RTPs for all are displayed in the Game Rules.

Loner: Slot Verdict

Okay, that just happened. Loner is either a humorous trip to the past with a, how shall we put it, colourful character… or it hits just a little too close to home for comfort. No judgement. Whatever your reaction may be, once again, Nolimit City proves it is mashing out online slots, which no one, literally no one else, is coming close to. The studio, at times, is like that weird cousin you see once a year at family reunions who sits giggling in the corner of the room, lighting their farts on fire with a pack of matches while everyone else is desperately trying to think of polite things to say to each other. Not always, but Loner for falls into a category alongside Gluttony, Walk of Shame, and Jingle Balls.

As such, it won't be to everyone's particular palette. But even if not, Loner is easily entertaining enough to spend some time at least demoing. It's ever so slightly reminiscent of those Blueprint Gaming slots that come with a lengthy list of features requiring time to work through all of them to see how they play out. Sausage Fest, sorry, no, Sausage Party was one that came to mind as an example. Loner has a stack of bonus buys on hand to speed the process of seeing everything it is capable of, however, which is a help.

What it has to offer is as diverse as it is uniquely innovative. Moreover, within the broad umbrella of innovation is ample room for rapture and/or disappointment. Ample. Bonus features like Tick Tick Bomb and Pin The Win are over quite quickly and can easily go either way. As can God Mode and Shoot Shoot Duck. What's good for gamblers who like choice, Loner provides a huge menu of bonus buys, betting options, as well as simply grinding away with regular bets. Although, the xBet Double feature triggered bonuses with noticeably greater frequency. It's not cheap, though. Neither is buying God Mode, but as seen while playing Nine to Five or Brick Snake 2000, it's an insanely fast way of witnessing Loner's 14,999x top win - or obliterating the bankroll.

Players tickled by Loner's one-of-a-kind feature set should be just as entertained by its humour as well, so doing things like taking a moment to listen to the commenter's banter is recommended. To wrap up, one wonders if Loner is not only an entertaining slot made by one the most outrageously creative design teams working in the gambling space but also a tongue-in-cheek mirror held up to a segment of society driven by consumption and instant gratification. Then again, after playing Loner, perhaps we all exhibit these traits to greater or lesser degrees and the method for judging where we sit on the scale of discerning consumer at one end to rapacious degenerate at the other is how tidy the house is. Just a thought.