Squeeze

Squeeze: Slot Overview

Come bring your tired, weary bones and rest them on the island of Squeeze, a fictional land created by the minds of ELK Studios. This sunny waterside location has been chosen as the spot for the studio to try out a new squeeze/tumble technique. Squeeze is a cluster paying slot where new symbols push winning symbols together from either side of the grid to pop and replace them. It's like squishing an orange with your bare hands in order to force the juicy goodness out, if you will. Goodness there is to be had here, too, in a slot rammed with all manner of extra features.

If you're the sort of person who likes, or would like, to holiday where there isn't another soul to be seen for miles and miles, then Squeeze presents an ideal place to hang out. It feels a little lonely, as if you've just washed up on shore, paddled over, or sailed in, or whatever, but it's pretty, with Hawaii-style mountains, blue seas, and exotic plant life. That's about it, really. Whilst a little generic looking, Squeeze skirts between being somewhat desolate and an absolute tropical paradise, plus the jammin' choons inject life.

Propped up on the sand, held together by bits of wood, is Squeeze's 6-column, 7-row gaming grid. As a cluster pays slot, wins are formed when at least 5 matching pay symbols are connected in vertical and/or horizontally adjacent positions anywhere on the grid, which triggers a sort of tumble sideways feature known as the Squeeze Mechanism. There's nothing laid back about Squeeze's 8 out of 10, highly volatile math model nor its 94% RTP figure, produced either when betting 20 c to $/€100 per spin or using the X-iter to buy features.

Squeeze's pay symbols are alright, nothing wrong with them, and are made up of blue, green, yellow, and red square blobs as the low pays, then blue, green, yellow, and red fruit like blobs as the highs. Clusters of 5 OAK are worth 0.1x to 2x, while the biggest 17+ sized clusters pay 5x to 250x. When wilds are on the board, they're able to help complete winning clusters by substituting any regular pay symbol.

Squeeze: Slot Features

A spin begins with new symbols filling the grid, the Feature Meters empty, and the win Multiplier reset. At the start of a spin, one or more Feature Meters may increase, triggering features before wins are calculated. Symbols in winning clusters get squeezed, progressing the corresponding Feature Meters. After squeezing, the winning clusters explode, and wins are paid.

Squeeze Mechanism

When a winning cluster forms, symbols begin squeezing. The Feature Meter corresponding to each winning cluster fills by +1, depending on the colour of the squeezed symbols:

• Blue symbols - Swap Symbols Meter.
• Green symbols - Upgrade Symbols Meter.
• Yellow symbols - Make Symbol Big Meter.
• Red symbols - Spawn Wilds Meter.

Bounce Back Feature

When winning clusters squeeze, there is a chance the symbols Bounce Back, thereby increasing the win multiplier. After the Bounce Back, the same winning clusters stay on the screen for an extra squeeze. This feature can repeat.

Feature Meters

Each Feature Meter is linked to a certain feature. Features are activated by completely filling the meter. Feature Meters are emptied when there are no more wins. The features available are:

• Feature Swap - swaps positions between 2 chosen symbols. Three swaps per filled meter occur.
• Feature Upgrade - upgrades all instances of a symbol value to the next highest value. If the chosen symbols are the highest already, they turn into wilds.
• Feature Make Big - grows a paying symbol to 3x3 or 4x4. Big symbols revert to smaller symbols to calculate wins.
• Feature Spawn Wilds - replaces 2 to 6 symbols with wilds. Wilds may appear as Super Charged Wilds.

Super Charged Symbol

When part of a win, a super charged symbol fills the corresponding coloured meter.

Bonus Game & Super Bonus Game

Landing 3 scatters triggers 5 free spins. Feature Meters and the Win Multiplier carry over to the bonus round and are persistent throughout. If one of the 3 triggering scatters is a super scatter symbol, 5 free drops in the super bonus game are triggered. Before each drop, one or more Feature Meters are filled. Feature Meters and the Win Multiplier carry over to the bonus round and are persistent throughout. Landing 3 scatters during the bonus or super bonus game adds extra free drops. If one of the retriggering scatters is a super scatter, the bonus game is upgraded to the super bonus game.

X-iter

By using the X-iter function, players are able to buy these:

• Bonus Hunt - 3x the bet, for more than 3x the chance of triggering a bonus game.
• 1 Feature Meter - 10x the bet for a game round that starts with 1 or more Feature Meters prefilled.
• 2 Feature Meters - 25x the bet for a game round that starts with 2 or more Feature Meters prefilled.
• Bonus - 100x the bet.
• Super Bonus - 500x the bet.

Squeeze: Slot Verdict

It might take a bit of squeezing (in other words, luck mixed with patience) to really see fruitful outcomes when having a go at Squeeze, but it is able to produce solid results. Super bonus buys even turned out to be positive at times, which for an ELK slot can be quite the crap shoot. Demoing a super bonus round, at least, is one of the best ways to see exactly what this slot is capable of, and when it really winds up, pulling its bits and pieces together, the ride can be rather absorbing. There's quite a lot going on here - prefilled meters, persistent meters, a persistent win multiplier that can climb quite high, and, of course, not missing out, the Squeeze Mechanic, which is akin to a jazzed-up tumble feature, which is worth a look.

It should be said, though, that outside the super bonus, it was a lot harder to coax Squeeze into doing something extraordinary. You do get little tasters of the potential repeat win mayhem, as meters fill and trigger their features and so on, but without a massive multiplier, it did feel like treading water rather than powering confidently through it. Not sure about the visuals of the Squeeze mechanic. They weren't a put-off, but they weren't the most appealing either, for some reason. Perhaps it's because the gambling biz is so used to putting tumble features that operate top down rather than side to side, as if Squeeze defies gravity in a way that should not be. In a metaphysical sense, maybe, not sure.

No such second-guessing Squeeze's max win, capped as it is at 10,000x the bet. ELK Studios certainly knows how to make brightly coloured tumble slots - Frogblox, Buggin, J-Pop, Hula Balua, and Tropicool 3, are for instances, and Squeeze is another playable example of this style that can discharge good things when squoozed just so.