POP Royale

POP Royale: Slot Overview

Hey players, how's your loadout looking? Ready to battle it up? If so, then we might have the game for you. Going by the name of POP Royale, it's a sort of battle royale slash Fortnite-style online slot powered by the company's popular PopWins gaming mechanic. Really, by now, it is rather difficult to keep tabs on the number of PopWins slots that are available, and AvatarUX continues to fire them off the line on a regular basis. Fortunately, like chowing down on your favourite fast food, the experiences are consistently satisfying, with regular feature tweaks injected to make them feel relatively new again and usually backed up by strong numbers. Much of this can be found in POP Royale if you're ready to rumble.

High up in the clouds is where POP Royale does its stuff in both the base game and free spins. As mentioned, the game has a futuristic Fortnite/PVP video game feel about it, full of combatants, weapons, bright, chunky artwork, gambling options, and dramatic tunes. It's unlike just about anything else in AvatarUX's PopWins series, thematically, which they kind of have to be. By now, the studio has dropped so many of these they sort of have to pick wildly varied themes to help each game stand out from the others. In some ways, this has been a good thing, as being forced to think outside the box has resulted in a wide variety of PopWins-themed slots from things like MonkeyPop to Kitty POPpins.

POP Royale is played on a dynamically shifting game grid, which has resting dimensions in the base game of 5 reels and 3 rows. At this size, players are equipped with 243 ways to win, growing to 59,049 when the grid is grown to its full size. Reels grow when winning combinations land. The symbols involved in the win are removed and replaced by two new ones – up to a maximum reel height of 6 in the base game or 9 in free spins. At max height, winning symbols are replaced by just one symbol. In the base game, when a win sequence ends, the reels reset to their regular size. With a highly volatile math model driving the bus, along with a surprisingly high RTP of 97.96%, players can pick a stake of 20 p/c to $/€40.

Symbols time, and with 14 regular pays, POP Royale is stacked with them. The low pays are 9-A card royals; the highs are made up of 7 character symbols, plus a lone super high pay character. Hitting a 5 OAK winning way pays out 1.2x to 1.6x for the royals, 2.5 to 8 times the bet for the highs, and 15x for the super high. Wins pay left to right and right to left; however, 5 OAK wins pay one way only. Lastly, POP Royale is without wild symbols.

POP Royale: Slot Features

The PopWins mechanic is needed to gain entrance to POP Royale's bonus round. When all 5 reels are expanded to 6 positions high in the base game, free spins are awarded. In free spins, the progress of unlocking reels does not necessarily reset to the base level. Instead, reels reset down to the shortest reel height between free spins. Free spins start with an x2 multiplier. Each win increases the multiplier by +1 after wins are paid. Reaching full height on all reels gives an immediate +3 to the multiplier and +4 to the multiplier for every win after that.

Gamble Wheel

Before playing free spins, players are able to gamble their spins. Successful gambles award extra free spins. Unsuccessful gambles take players back to the base game. Free spins start at 5 and can go up to 8, then 12, if successful. The gamble wheel may land on a golden field, which increases free spins to 12, then to 16 if successful.

XPRESS

From the XPRESS menu, players can buy a spin on the gamble wheel for up to 16 free spins for 75x the bet, buy 5 free spins for 75x the bet or 12 free spins for 300x the bet. Also available from the XPRESS is the ante bet, which doubles the chance of entering free spins for an increase to the wager of 25%.

POP Royale: Slot Verdict

One of POP Royale's main highlights is its RTP. At 97.969%, you just don't see numbers like that in connection with return values much anymore. Maybe POP Royale will help persuade other studios that, hey, they too can up the return value and still make a good game. Then again, probably not. The general trend feels like it's on a downward slope at the time of writing, but you never know what the future may bring. Other than this attractive stat, POP Royale doesn't deliver anything astonishingly new features-wise, which has never been seen in a PopWins slot before. It's basically CherryPop, the third instalment in the range. In saying that, though, the features are proven performers which can step up when POP Royale gets on a roll.

For PopWins newbies, especially those with a video gaming background, POP Royale might make a good entry point into the range. It's easy-to-follow, fun when things are popping, and the free spins round can get even better as the reels and multiplier grow. At best, the game is good for wins of up to 10,000x the bet, making it tough to pick major holes in the way POP Royale functions. One possible critique is that by now, AvatarUX could have made POP Royale with one arm tied behind its back. But hey, slots don't all have to be monstrously innovative to be enjoyable, and POP Royale is so slick in just about every other regard, the lack of original game components is easy to overlook if all someone's after is a playable pop slot.

PopWins veterans might find it harder to get massively worked up over POP Royale's features since it's not a game that pushes the series into dark, uncharted mechanical waters. But the entertaining video game vibe, stand-up stats, and all-over generally snappy flow mean POP Royale is a handy go-to option for some poppin' action.