Original Release: IGT, 2022
IGT’s modernized Texas Tea “sequel” keeps a lot of the trappings of the original, but is a substantially different type of slot
Texas Tea: Strike It Rich (IGT, 2022)
Review by: C. M0use
The “revamped” version of Texas Tea (“Strike It Rich”) does something unfortunately common in the slot world – take a vintage property that became popular for one thing, then do the exact opposite when you revive it.
In this case, the original Texas Tea is perhaps the all-time champion of low volatility in slots. The new version ups the minimum bets (perhaps to pay for its fancy new cabinet) and is much more reliant on hitting a bonus game that requires multiple elements to go your way to keep you afloat; compare and contrast that to the “dividend bonus” in the original game where you would just get a respectable lump sum handed to you when you hit it, with no further checks of your luck.
So when you first step up to the game, aside from the fancy tallboy new cabinet style, the playfield looks a great deal like the original game. 5×3, very similar set of symbols, so on. But when you put your money in you’ll notice the minimum bet is a whole lot higher; the original game let you go as low as 9 cents to cover every line, this one is a flat minimum of 50 cents, and I’ve seen machines set higher to $1 minimums! The configuration I saw in a bank when I was testing this was 50c-$1-$2-$5-$10 for bet options. Some videos online indicate there MAY be a 25c-to-$5 configuration but people are terrible about just looking down and filming the wager buttons so I can’t confirm this.
Anyway. In addition to being more expensive to play, line win possibilities seem to have been vastly reduced. The game simply eats your money until you happen to hit one of the two available bonus games (down from three in the original, the “dividend check” feature is gone). The easier to hit of these is the three “strike it rich” scatter symbols, which don’t seem to have to sit on a payline this time out. This grants you 10 free spins, but in a new system that has those “nested” bonus hurdles that I really don’t care for. Each spin is on a 3×3 grid upon which you might land instant win amounts, tokens that go toward one of the progressive jackpots on the big board above, or an extra spin. But then there’s ANOTHER reel that determines whether you collect all of these prizes or not (except for any extra spins, which you always seem to get). And of course, you’ll usually wind up being teased by falling just a token short of earning the bigger jackpot amounts when all is said and done.
The “place the derricks” bonus game also returns from the original, this one a little harder to trigger as it keeps to the same rules of having at least four of them land across a payline. While this bonus feature doesn’t put you through additional “luck checks,” it also seems to have much more modest payoffs … lacking the possibility of progressive jackpots, you can expect maybe a win of 20x to 40x your wager (so $20 to $40 off a 50 cent bet) for a typical round here.
The aesthetics are more modernized, up to and including some new and more Smash Bros-ish sounding music, but you’ll pay for the whole shebang in terms of volatility and needing a much bigger budget to expect to make the game work for you. A far cry from the original Texas Tea, which was the king of slot stability and low-roller friendliness.
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