Original Release: PlayStudios, 2016, Android/iOS
Part of the whole MyVegas social casino family, POP! Slots offers a more social and flashy experience with the same real-world rewards on offer
POP! Slots (Android, PlayStudios, 2016)
Where to Buy: Freemium (download from official app stores)
How to Emulate: Android Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
POP! Slots appears to be an attempt to address the fact that a lot of these “social casinos,” PlayStudios’ own MyVegas included, really just aren’t very social. The game tries, at least in its modest little mobile freemium way, to approximate the feel of a packed casino floor on a Friday or Saturday night.
It ties in with the rest of the “myVIP” lineup of games, letting you pool your earned rewards points (via a required Facebook login) with MyVegas and Mobile Tetris and all that. The overall structure is not dissimilar to MyVegas, but with a lot of little tweaks and additions.
You start out by creating a very basic avatar, who you’ll actually see walking around the game world. You can then enter MGM’s various real-life Vegas casinos, though all are level-gated and at first the only one available is the MGM Grand. Each has their own collection of slots, and you can actually walk around the little casino floor freely (though there seems to be no point and not a whole lot to see).
The lineup of games actually has a lot of overlap with MyVegas, with many of the same titles. But this one has many more overall titles, and the ones that are shared between the two apps are generally redesigned somewhat. Part of these redesigns is to accomodate the new “social” focus. When you play a game, you pick a bank of machines to join that already has a random assortment of other players. With most of these games, when one player in the bank of machines hits free spins, EVERYONE gets them. Periodic EXP, coin and mini-game (more on that later) bonuses are also shared with the players currently at your bank of machines.
Some of the new games also have EXTREMELY elaborate bonus features. Each casino sports one “big” game that takes you to a competitive bonus feature played out on a big screen, with two banks of machines competing against each other for prizes. Each also has a separate “lounge” area that’s host to two slots that have bonus features so big, they look like a Nintendo 64 game level and have to have their own entire room to themselves! Some of them kinda feel like they take too long to play out, at least if you’re just here to grind out loyalty points.
As the name indicates, the game lineup is pretty much all slots, no random blackjack or what have you like in MyVegas. There is one other option called “Bingo Blitz” that is only available during certain hours, and is kinda a combination of a slot tournament and bingo … it’s steep to play at first, though, at 300k minimum per spin (you start with just 10 million chips).
The whole thing is definitely more immersive than MyVegas, with something always going on between the social aspects and background mini-games that you keep earning free spins or card packs for. It’s also just generally more colorful and lively, and though “socializing” is limited to emoji-ing at other players on your current machine bank (no chat elements), it takes a step forward in actually feeling like a little casino world to hang out in.
The downside of all that is that it’s more distracting than MyVegas if you just want to set it in the background and spin for loyalty points while you do something else. I mean that’s still possible, most of the basic “7s” games have unobtrusive bonus features that don’t require your input, but the stripped-down web-based MyVegas is probably the best choice just for that (it also makes almost all the games available immediately, whereas Pop only gives you about seven to start out with and it takes quite a while to unlock the full roster).
The time passes very quickly with all this stuff going on, though, almost too fast for the game’s business model of selling you chips. Like all the PlayStudios games these days, you’re limited to 4k loyalty points in each one per day, and you can easily reach that here even at “low roller” levels with under an hour of play (and without putting your bankroll at significant risk). After you reach it there just doesn’t seem like much more point in playing for the day, at least if you’re primarily interested in earning rewards.
Links
Quick leveling guide (for Swagbucks, Inbox Dollars and such)
Videos