LooneyPop

LooneyPop: Slot Overview

Hey, pop fans, here's another one for you from the productive minds at software house AvatarUX. Its title is LooneyPop, and perhaps the name threw us, but it was a little tricky to know what to make of everything at first. However, if you're a keen fan of animated sci-fi, then LooneyPop's offbeat theme might be of interest. As well as playful cartoon antics, LooneyPop comes with a device called a Zap Reel which injects modifiers into the fray, free spins with a pre-feature gamble option, and of course, stacks of poppin'.

LooneyPop leaves a bit of room for reader interpretation, and one of those analyses might be a world under invasion by aliens, flying saucers, and a scientist tasked with uncovering the breakthrough needed to save the planet. The 1996 movie Mars Attacks! sprang to mind, not just because of the characters, but of a general not taking itself too seriously, attitude, plus humorous elements. We could be totally wrong, of course, and feel free to conjure up your own explanation of the story. Whatever is going on, it looks like fun, has been nicely rendered and animated, making for another enjoyable PopWins arena to dive into.

Playable on any device, LooneyPop has a dynamic 5-reel game grid which begins each base game spin three rows high, stretching to a maximum of 6 high or 9 high in free spins. It's a highly volatile slot, with a number of ways of being tackled, producing a return to player value of 96%. Players pick bets from a minimum allowed amount of 20 p/c to a maximum of $/€40, with impressive winning potential to shoot for.

Wins require landing identical symbols across at least three adjacent reels, starting from the left side of the grid or the right. Since the grid pays both ways, it means players get at least 486 ways to win, rising to 118,098 at the most when all 9 rows are in play during free spins. For lows, we find 9 to Ace card royals, while the higher value bunch are a dynamite bundle, a rocket launcher, a bomb, a glamorous lady, a male gunslinger, a scientist, and an alien. A five-of-a-kind royal win pays 0.2 to 0.6 times the bet; the rest are worth 1 to 1.5 times the stake. Wilds do not exist in the game.

LooneyPop: Slot Features

How the PopWins component works is like this. Each winning symbol is removed from the board and replaced by two new ones, increasing the size of the reel. This process continues until there are no wins, though the reels can be 6 positions high at the most in the base game or 9 high in free spins. In the base game, at the end of a PopWins run, the reels return to their three high base level.

Zap Reel

Above the grid sits a three-cell bar called the Zap Reel. On each spin, the Zap Reel displays Feature Rewards, which are active on the current spin. These can be:

• Multiplier – x2, x3, x5, or x10 multiplier values. Multipliers are multiplicative if more than one is used. Multipliers are applied to a winning combination and all further wins that occur directly below the Multiplier Reward on the Zap Reel.
• Split symbol – results in up to 5 of the same symbols in the same position.
• Expand Winning symbol – covers the whole reel if the symbol below the Expanding Rewards is part of a win.
• Synced Reel – synchronises 2 adjacent reels in the base game with identical symbols. In free spins, it's 3 adjacent reels.

Free Spins

When all 5 reels reach 6 positions high in the base game, free spins are awarded. In free spins, the grid starts at 6 symbols high on each free spin and resets to the shortest achieved reel height. Players are awarded +2 additional free spins if all reels hit 9 high. Now, 6 free spins are initially awarded, but players may gamble for more on the Wacky Gamble Wheel if they so choose. Here it is possible to win a maximum of 18 free spins, bearing in mind unsuccessful gambles forfeit everything.

Bonus Buy

LooneyPop offers three bonus buy choices. One is the Boom Bonus with 6 free spins and possibly 2 reels synced for 125x the bet. The second is the Wacky Gamble Wheel awarding up to 18 free spins (or zero) for 125x the bet, while the last option is Maxi Boomy Bonus for 500x the bet, which gets you 12 free spins where up to 3 reels can be synched.

LooneyPop: Slot Verdict

It's human nature to want to label and pigeonhole things in some sort of logical taxonomy that makes everything easy to group and compare against others. Why, PopWins itself is fast forming its very own online slot category, so numerous have they become. Each one picks a different theme and feature set combo to showcase the power of the pop. Then in walks LooneyPop, which was a little tricky to define at first, with bits and pieces from all over, like a gunslinger, bombs, as well as a Jessica Rabbit-esque character all piling in to confuse matters. However, it didn't take long before a b-movie sci-fi zany experiment, alien invasion subject matter came to the fore. Till then, we'd had to just surrender to LooneyPop's unusual charms and see where it took us.

And where it took us was on another smooth-running, well-animated, fun PopWins adventure. One of LooneyPop's main differentiating factors is its Zap Reel, which may or may not have been inspired by the sort of activity Nolimit City has been up to with its Enhancer Cells concept, dropping in symbol splits, multipliers and synched reels. Kudos to multipliers, there might only be a maximum of three of them on screen at the same time, but they can multiply rather than add to each other to help pep wins. Synched reels aren't shabby either, complimenting the pay-both-ways system, and symbol splits provide the finishing touch. There might not be a rising multiplier like there sometimes is in a PopWins game, yet that doesn't stop LooneyPop from generating hits of up to 50,000 times the stake.

And so goes another playable PopWins slot. It doesn't feel like LooneyPop will gain the crown as the top PopWins game, but the quirky theme, seamless performance, and big win potential make it a solid choice; plus, the Zap Reel gives it enough originality factor to separate it from its peers.