Aliens have invaded Las Vegas!  Actually I went to Vegas for real a few years ago and I’m pretty sure aliens have been there for a while!  Ha ha!  Anyway, in this free-to-play iOS game (reviewed on iPad here), play as Chazz Fabulous, a clueless, idiotic Vegas stage magician who receives sarcastic tips from his hapless assistant.  The only way to defeat these aliens is by…playing slots?!?  Yup, but while this is your typical slot machine game, it certainly held my interest a bit more than most, so let’s see why.

The game may try and tote itself as a tower defense game, but it’s just slots.  But it’s slots with a point.  As you spin, aliens will creep up on the field, kind of like Plants vs. Zombies.  To send them off the playfield, you’ll need to make a match of three or more on the slots, and it has to be on the space that the alien is residing.  Some aliens can hop two spaces, or take extra hits, and some are even disguised as Elvis impersonators or other humans.  If the aliens reach you, you won’t die, but they will take away some of your money when they attack you.  You won’t lose if you run out of money; you’ll just have to wait a bit to get some more coins so you can continue playing.

The game does a good job of gradually introducing you to the rules of the game.  First you start out at three, then five rows of slots.  As you make matches and destroy aliens, you’ll fill up a meter.  When it’s full, you’ll level up.  Not only does levelling up earn you a big payout of coins, but it also usually unlocks a new symbol to match or token to use.  Certain symbols can give you items when you tap them and matching others produces different effects.

You can use tokens to give you an edge on your next spin.  Drag a token to a spot on the playfield to use its effects.  The Wild Card token allows you to make that next spin’s space a wild card for easier matches.  Other tokens will attack or trap nearby aliens, or give you items if you make a match over them.  If you run out of tokens, you can always buy more with purple diamonds that you can earn by playing.  You can also buy purple diamonds (and more coins) with real money, but the purple diamonds are pretty easy to get on their own.

And that’s really all there is to it.  As you reach certain levels, you can unlock new areas with more slots that make you bet higher but give you bigger payouts.  As a free-to-play game, there are a few annoyances, though.  The pop-up ads that appear every so often really interrupt the flow of gameplay, and there are in-game purchase things to click everywhere (to buy more coins and diamonds).  But because of its silly humor and premise, this slot machine did hold my interest more than most.  So fans of casino games may enjoy this one.  I think it would even make a fun real life slot machine, too.

Kid Factor:

Reading skill is a must for the text, and of course there is simulated gambling involved.  Parental supervision is recommended with all the pop-up ads and in-game purchases.  There is some crude humor and cartoony violence as aliens can barf on the playfield, explode, or grab onto your face for an attack.  But it’s all very silly and cartoonish.  I might be OK with kids playing this, with supervision of course, although I don’t know if slot machines are the best types of games to be teaching kids to play.

Tags: Game Reviews