Original Release: Kama Games, 2021, Android / iOS
AEW’s first licensed game has pretty much nothing to do with their product.
AEW Casino (Android, Kama Games, 2021)
Where to Buy: Freemium download via Apple / Google app stores
How to Emulate: Android Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Right before AEW Casino came out, there was a lot of speculation that it was a re-skinned version of a more generic casino game. While that doesn’t appear to be completely accurate, it also isn’t at all far off the mark. What it appears to be is a compilation of developer Kama Games’ individual casino game titles tied together loosely with AEW branding. And when I say loosely, I mean LOOSELY.
Beyond some interstitial loading screens showing the likes of Sting and Brandi Rhodes, this game has nothing to do with AEW. Really, nothing at all. Not even halfassed token measures, like giving you wrestling gear to put on your avatar or having the wrestlers appear as AI opponents.
You’re dumped into the game with no introduction or preamble, though those things turn out to not be necessary since there’s zero connection to the AEW product. It’s just a straightforward and fairly generic collection of casino games, competently executed for the most part but with absolutely nothing remarkable or unique about them.
Aside from a lack of any killer unique feature or gimmick to it, AEW Casino sits below most casino games due to its handling of chips. It’s extremely tight and clearly trying to press you hard to pay real money for chips right from the beginning. Free chips come from a one-time daily bonus and the periodically refreshing ability to watch short ad videos in return for them. The ads are usually for other apps, and some of them are real sheisty; locking you into an install screen at the end that has no obvious way to cancel out of it, forcing you to close the AEW Casino app entirely and restart it to escape without being railroaded into a download.
After your initial round of bonuses you’ll have about 40-50k in free chips to play with. Most games have a minimum bet of 150 or 200 chips, which is reasonable enough. But the game has a bizarre “table limits” system for everything, even slots and video poker. For example you need to be holding at least 10k chips to be allowed to play video poker and 25k to play roulette. You don’t have to wager that full amount in a sitting, you just need it to be allowed into the game. I’ve never seen this done before at any casino, real or fake.
There isn’t a whole lot to say about the casino games. The slots are all generic, no licensed titles that I’m aware of. The overall game count is pretty low – maybe 30 or 40 slots, 10 types of video poker (though they do have some stuff that is extremely rare in real casinos these days like 10s Or Better and Deuces+Jokers Wild). The table games do have a social aspect and they offer Texas and Omaha poker. Everything looks good and plays at least alright, though I didn’t like how small some of the button areas were.
The game also seems to be plagued with technical issues at present in its early days – a fair amount of freezing and crashing out, long load times and random button press delays.
I recall reading something about “building social links with wrestlers” but I can’t find anything like that in there, nor any mention of it by other people in the early commentary and player reviews. Literally, the only thing tying this game to AEW is the pictures of wrestlers on occasional loading screens.
AEW Casino really gives you no reason to play it whatsoever. What I was hoping for is something roughly analogous to the “cribs” mode in the ESPN and NFL 2K games from the 00s, where you could unlock pieces of memorabilia and maybe video clips and such as you go. That and maybe virtual wrestler avatars getting in on the games with their unique personalities as well (a la Sierra’s original Hoyle’s Book of Games). Alas, absolutely no ambition to be found here whatsoever. If you want to play a collection of generic online play money casino games just to play them, you might as well do it at a social casino that offers some kind of real tangible rewards in return.
I like AEW but I really hope that the rest of their planned game lineup is being given more attention or it’s going to be an absolute train wreck. This really couldn’t have been much lower-effort.
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