Original Release: Red Rock Resorts, 2018, PC
Other Releases: Android / iOS, 2019
The social casino from Vegas’ Station chain.
STN Play (PC, Red Rock Resorts, 2018)
Where to Buy: Free to play (w/ optional microtransactions)
How to Emulate: Android Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Station Casinos is one of the two big “off Strip” casino brands in Vegas, with about half a dozen properties (and a few little Wildfire slot parlors) known more as being places for locals than as prime tourist destinations. For the gambler hunting comps and rewards points, the value has dropped somewhat after the pandemic as they shut down the three most inexpensive properties permanently (the two Fiestas and Texas Station) and also sold off the Palms to a Native American group just after dumping tons of money into renovating it. That, and they also permanently shut down the Feast buffets that were a pretty good value (you could get a decent AYCE breakfast with coffee for like $7 or $8 at most of the properties in a pleasant enough environment, sad to see those go).
Still, they maintain six properties in Vegas that run the gamut from really nice and upscale (Red Rock, Green Valley Ranch) to decent enough midscale (Palace Station, Santa Fe) to tweaker fiesta (Boulder Station). They also manage the Graton Casino just north of San Francisco and I believe that property is plugged into their rewards program now too. And they got an online sports book if you’re in Nevada. So there’s still at least some reason to mess with them even if the budget buffet got shut down and a big whack of the budget rooms went with it.
Anyway, after all that preamble, their “social casino” STN Play has (at least thus far) little opportunity to earn actual rewards points for use at the real casinos. When it first came out in 2018, there were occasional tournaments that offered prizes of rewards points for the winners … but I can’t find any evidence that’s still happening, or at least not any time recently. You get 1500 Boarding Pass points ($1.50 in actual spending power) for linking your player’s card to STN Play, but that’s about it that I’ve seen so far. As with many of these things, the only real way to “earn” rewards points is to spend money on the play money chips in-game.
As far as free bankroll goes, you’ll get at least 500 chips for your daily login plus a bonus spin (ranging from about 1,000 to one million) that refreshes every four hours. In 2018-19 the minimum bets for everything (even slots) were really high and this play money would not take you far at all, but it seems that they’ve reduced the minimums on nearly all the games recently. For example you can now play blackjack and quite a few slots for as little as 50 coins a hand/spin.
Unfortunately, three years in the game selection is still pretty limited. There are a healthy amount of slots of course, a lot of which are commonly available in real money European online casinos (lots of NetEnt stuff). Only a handful of table games though (just roulette and blackjack through the web browser version at the moment), and a small handful of video poker and keno variants.
The best thing I can say about the games is that they’re basic but crisp and good-looking, they load fast and the place doesn’t seem to be plagued with bugs. Kind of a low bar to clear, but some online casinos don’t manage to do it.
Lacking opportunities to actually earn rewards points, all you can say about this is that it’s free and functions well enough but doesn’t really have much of a purpose other than to get you hooked and spending on that Canadough.
Skimming through the various app store reviews, it seems there are at least some people that don’t understand they’re not playing for real money until they’ve already paid for coins! I guess as long as there’s enough of that to keep this functional you won’t be seeing much in the way of tangible rewards out of this thing, kind of disappointing as Station is actually generally not tight about the freebies and giveaways to get traffic in the door. But that’s how it sits in 2021 at least. Not a whole lot of purpose to it even if you’re in Nevada or Nor Cal, let alone if you don’t plan on visiting.
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