Outsourced

Outsourced: Slot Overview

Editor's note: The Slash feature has been removed from the game due to "technical issues".

Outsourcing is a word workers may dread to hear. If you've got a good job with benefits and a pension only to see it move offshore, to be taken up by workers with fewer rights and less pay, you can imagine how soul-crushing that would be. Where making ever greater profits is highly desirable, outsourcing must be an attractive option for many businesses. For a possible taste of soul-crushing, let's take Nolimit City's online slot, Outsourced, for a spin. Outsourced contains monumentally dicey betting options that can fast-track a gambler's journey to delight or despair. Many are optional, though; well, the whole game is optional, really, so Outsourced caters to an enormous array of gambling palates.

Outsourced's appearance puts it amongst previous slots Brick Snake 2000 and Nine To Five, bearing a cartoon, faux Beavis and Butt-Head 1990's brightly coloured look. The factory floor looks to be the game's setting, complete with robotic arms, bits of plastic junk, consumer items, things we can use to fulfil our consumerist desires. Or reinforce our shackles to them? Either way, a sweet, laid-back tune helps ease the hollowness carved out of our souls by unbridled, yet unfulfilling, consumption.

Four-by-four reel sets are something you don't see very often. Big Time Gaming has had stabs with them, and one is used in Outsourced, as well. In its natural 4x4 state, 256 ways to win are provided, but win ways can reach higher numbers from xWays symbols. Four RTP versions are available, 96.08% being the highest, and volatility is extreme (10). Bets go from 10 c to $/€100 per spin, but it is possible to activate Nolimit Boosters, adding another to the stake.

Piles of Js, Qs, Ks, and As are the low pays, awarding a meagre 0.05x the bet for 4 OAK. Paying more are plastic hands, heads, sneaks, gaming devices, and plastic baby heads, worth 0.15 to 0.5 times the bet for 4-of-a-kind. Wilds substitute all paying symbols and land on any reel. Four wilds pay 5 times the bet.

Outsourced: Slot Features

Outsourced outsources its thrills through such features as xWays, xNudge Wilds, Print Spins, Extra Spins, Sweatshop Spins, Sweatiershop Spins, God Mode, a Slash Game, and bonus buys.

xWays & xNudge Wild

xWays symbols reveal a low or mid-pay symbol in a size of 2 to 4. It may also reveal a blocker symbol of size 1. If more than one xWays symbol lands, all of them will display matching symbols. xNudge Wild symbols, meanwhile, land anywhere on the grid and always nudge to become fully stacked. For each step they nudge, the wild multiplier increases by +1. Multiple xNudge values add to each other for a total multiplier.

Print Spins

Winning symbols payout before triggering Print Spins (respins). Winning symbols disappear, leaving gaps for new symbols to come in. The multiplier on those winning potions increases by +1 for each Print Spin. Multipliers are counted for regular pay symbols only. Print Spins end when there are no more wins. If xWays lands in Print Spins, its revealed symbol size is multiplied with the increased multiplier on its position during its pay out. The symbol multiplier on the winning xWays position reverts to the previous value plus 1.

Extra Spins

Players may get the chance to buy an additional spin when a round ends. The additional spin keeps the multiplier state of the symbols in the previous spin. The cost of the additional spin is based on the multiplier values. Scatter symbols do not land on Extra Spins.

Sweatshop Spins & Sweatiershop Spins

Landing 3 scatter symbols triggers 3 Sweatshop Spins. Any symbol multipliers from the base game are kept during spins. Landing 4 scatter symbols triggers 5 Sweatiershop Spins. They're the same as Sweatshop Spins, except you get 5 of them.

God Mode

Outsourced's max win or MAKS WIN as it is called, can be instantly achieved in the base game by landing M, A, K, and S symbols.

Nolimit Bonus Buy

Players may buy their way into the various bonuses, such as: Sweatshop Spins - 60x the bet, Sweatiershop Spins - 200x the bet, GOD MODE - 1,300x the bet, Lucky Draw 50%/50% - 130x the bet, or Slash Game - 5,000x the bet.

Nolimit Boosters

At a cost of 1.5x the base bet, players can activate the xBet, making it 4 times more likely to activate Sweatshop Spins or Sweatiershop Spins by guaranteeing a scatter on the second reel. At the cost of 5x the bet, players get a spin that starts with x2 multipliers on all positions, or 90x the bet for a spin that starts with x5 multipliers on all positions.

Outsourced: Slot Verdict

Outsourced is another Nolimit City dig at modern society, and doesn't it make you wonder? Were things better back in the day when the world was smaller, less connected, more intimate, less corporate, and less all about squeezing every last penny out of a business venture? In the long term, it's hard not to see business owners firing the bulk of their employees and replacing them with droids who never tire, never get sick, never complain, never strike, and, best of all, don't demand pay cheques. AI creep feels pretty real at the moment, where creative work is increasingly done by robots while people are stuck doing the manual drudge work. Wasn't it meant to be the other way around?

[The "Slash Game" has been removed from the game] On with the show, and at first, seeing a 5,000x max win figure, the thought was that Outsourced might be one of Nolimit City's smaller, perhaps more approachable games. Then came the part about being able to gamble the MAKS WIN for the chance to win up to 50,000x (or lose the lot) in a digit-removing Slash Game. Ah, right, yes, that's the Nolimit City we know, pushing boundaries, rubbing certain folk up the wrong way, tickling others. Risking 5,000x for the chance to go to 50,000x in what might be considered a gorier version of a Bitcoin Crash game. It won't be for everyone. Yet, like wingsuit flying, some might not be able to say no to the adrenal rush. Heck, you can even buy the Slash Game… for 5,000x. Nolimit City has really taken on the Facebook motto 'Move fast and break things', as Outsourced provides plenty of opportunities to potentially break things.

The scarier opportunities are voluntary, however, and do not have to be partaken of if a gambler so chooses. Cut out the Slash Game, and Outsourced's max win is modest by Nolimit City standards but does have a frequency of 1 in 185,000, which is quite positive compared to a lot of the competition. It is tempting, though, to have a punt on the hand slice in hopes of just getting the laser beam up, say, around the thumb or forefinger, to pep the win up. Therein lies Outsourced as a bare naked gambling tool, built around humorously treated subject matter and some newer mechanics to test run.