Germinator Slot
A Germinator sounds like a hybrid of a housekeeper and an exterminator. In actuality, it’s the name of a unique Microgaming video slot about germs. If you want to know what germs look like, they are orange and green and red and blue and yellow and they wear, on their spheroidal faces, a uniformly gormless expression. Or at least they do in the world of online slots.
If you’re tired of classic slot games featuring BAR symbols and cherries and playing cards and game logos, Germinator offers something a little different. Rather than the typical 3 or 5 reels, the slot features 6 spinning reels, in addition to a dozen paylines. If you’re unfamiliar with such a set-up, the slot gives you the chance to diversify your gaming habits and get to grips with a new mode of play. Variety is the spice of life and all that jazz.
Battling Bacteria
We all know bacteria are bad. In Germinator, the aim of the game is to group those nasty germs together in order to kick them off the purple 6×6 grid. The more germs you round up, the more money is paid out. And it doesn’t matter where the row begins or ends. A row of three or more germs wipes out the faction, with new germs taking the deposed germs’ place. On the whole, the grid looks more like an 8-bit puzzle than a traditional casino slot game.
First order of business – setting a reasonable bet. The maximum coin bet is one-per-line, with the betting ranging from 0.60 to 24. The jackpot, meanwhile, is a rather modest 720. Wins are paid per germ and multiplied by your bet-per-line. The return-to-player average sits at 95.5%, which is a little lower than most casino games.
Not All Germs Are Born Equal
A cursory look at the pay-table reveals some germs to be better than others – where your wallet is concerned, anyway. The yellow germ is the highest-paying, offering x10. Then it’s the green, which offers x2, followed by the blue germ, x1. The one-eyed red germ offers just x0.6 and the goggle-eyed orange germ pays x0.2. The pay-outs are pretty unexceptional, on the whole.
The gameplay, though, is hilarious – the brainless-looking germs cough and sneeze, then explode in a bright flash when you wipe them out. In this way, the game is not dissimilar from Tetris. Eliminating bacteria has never been this much fun. Incidentally, any germ that appears in both a horizontal and vertical winning combination will be counted twice.
The scatter symbol is the capsule, which can appear on any line. The capsules pop in and out of the reels during base play, though matching three or more of these icons at the end of each round means you’ll proceed, without delay, to the Medi Bonus game, where each win is awarded as a multiple of the bet-per-line. The round ends when no more matching combinations can be found.
In the Medi Bonus round, you’ll also get to select one germ to remove all germs of that strain from the grid. Naturally, the best thing to do is select the lower-value, regularly occurring germ clones; do this and you’ll have a greater chance of landing winning combinations, as new germs fall into place and (in theory) help you form winning rows. The Medi-Bonus can also be re-triggered.
Pros And Cons
Sometimes it’s good to ditch the traditional spinning reels and try something different. Germinator is certainly a break from the old routine, with a massive 6×6 grid and several unusual elements, not least of which is the exploding germ symbols. Germinator is also refreshingly simple to play. Matching three or more germ symbols is the name of the game, and with only five different germ strains, landing matching combinations is easier than you might think.
One wishes the base game had a greater number of features, but then again, there’s always the prospect of triggering the Medi Bonus. That said, one craves more from a game that looks and feels so different from the usual popular slot themes. Killing germs is good fun, but the pay-outs are modest and recouping your stake can be tricky at times. Throwing in a few wild symbols, a random jackpot or a free spins bonus would have gone some way towards improving this game. Over all, one can’t help but think it’s an opportunity missed.
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