Robotnik

Only preceded by Winterberries, and released on March 10, 2014, “Robotnik” is one of the first creations of the company “Yggdrasil Gaming” and since then this new player in the i-Gaming industry has not stopped surprising us with slots with novel designs and interesting special features that most of the time result to be very entertaining and even generous.

Robotnik is a game where the main character reminds me a bit to WALL • E, the robot of that film, however, it is clear that we are not talking about the same character. The theme of this slot shows a robot that lives in space and 10 different rocks represent regular symbols of the game, and additionally, we have two wild symbols, the first appears stacked and works only as a substitute for ordinary symbols, the other wild meets the above features and further multiplies your winnings by X3.

Two things make Robotnik a really interesting game, the first is that every time a wild symbol is displayed you get a free re-spin where such wild remain frozen in place, and if during the re-spin new wilds appear, the feature is extended once and again until more wild symbols no longer appear, so that at some point you can collect 7 or more wilds scattered on all the reels helping you to amass a real big win.

The second interesting feature is that the robot appears occasionally and at random to convert some rocks either in common or X3 wilds.

I had never really stopped to explore this game, but last week I had the opportunity to take a promotion offered by one of my favorite casinos and Robotnik was my choice, and now I have to say that this was a totally positive experience because during some spins I managed to get winnings up 75x my total bet. It is true that it is not uncommon to get dead spins in this game, but I think it is worth waiting until wilds start to emerge.

At the end of my session with Robotnik I had the joy of keeping my balance positive, but unfortunately for my next session I chose another game and my winnings finally vanished, but that's another story and now I think it would have been much better to have continued playing Robotnik, which it is a slot with which I have definitely an appointment for the next time I visit this casino again.

Robotnik is the video slot, coming from Yggdrasil, software that I really don't know much about.

Sometimes I see their games, but I rarely play them for the simple reason and it is so many games out there and its not possible to try them all. The first impress was that game looks so alike Netents Starbust. This is futuristic game with techno version of the classic waltz.

Well it is not Starbust in full nor it could be, but this game looks good enough and you can even make some profit, which is ok.

Cosmic theme with elements and you are into space of the universe and creation spinning in order to win and have a lots of fun.

There isn't bonus rounds nor features, no, just like in Starbust. This whole game is about wilds and the winning combinations doesn't come out like in Starbust so we can't really say it is a clone.

Starbust is quite unique and that is normal for Netent games. It is about stacked wild which remains sticky on the reels for another round. As per its symbols, I must tell you I have a beautiful stone, looks just like those symbols and it's from Afghanistan, it looks beautiful, but can't tell you the name as I lost its papers as well as the name of it.

This is a 5 reels, 40 paylines slot with max.win of 60.000 coins. Stacked and Random wilds with multiplier will bring some excitement if this game becomes boring and I would say, it can easily get boring. You can get sticky wilds on any spin plus there is Robotnik who could come out and start changing symbols into wilds and as per wilds, they can come single or with x 3 multiplier.

Now, I must say, that this game isn't for me, from its theme even I like space themes to its paytable and the most important, there is not much going on that would keep my attention.

To be honest I’ve never ever heard about Yggdrasil as a gambling software developer and definitely was some excitement factor when I saw this company’s work at a casino. Of course the name of this slot was also like a red rag in front of my eyes. Robotnik is a very interesting name for a slot especially a game like this and I’m not sure guys at Yggdrasil chosen the most proper one but this game is very, very similar to the very popular Starburst slot from NetEnt.

Fortunately, its picture quality also can be comparable to the big brother as it has really great and very attractive graphics and my favourite is the awesome transparent background image which illustrates planets and outer space and I have to praise the clever colour usage as it is really superb how the black and blue are mixed there. We can play here with gems as symbols and they are also very nicely drawn pictorial elements. The entire interface is very impressive and if I wouldn’t know it I could easily imagined because of the popularity of Starburst, NetEnt decided to create Starburst 2.

The similarities between these two product continues when we arrive to the actual game segment but I have to mention the most important difference is this game only pays using the traditional mode namely the wins are counted by just one direction, from leftmost to right. This is a big disadvantage especially if I look at the best paying winning combination and its rewarding ability because 500 times of line bet is poor enough for these game conditions. The Wild here also got dominant role as there is not just one but two Wilds from which a Wild works as a simple Wild and only can substitutes for other symbols without paying or win multiplying ability while the other one can triple the line wins.

The well-known re-spin feature is also built in this game too, meaning, after getting a Wild or Wild x3 on the table an automatic re-spin is awarded (regardless whether a win was or wasn’t accomplished with the first Wild) while the already arrived Wild stay on its position and all other symbols are spinning again. This process continues until no new Wild appears on the next spin. Fortunately, over the 2 Wild symbols we can get even more on the table as the name giving Robot can turn randomly any symbol on the screen into Wild during a spin or after it.

As you can see this slot is all about the appearing Wild and luckily lots of them are really pop up on the reels causing lot of wins. On the other hand these wins are almost exclusively from the smaller ones and the better paying combinations don’t like to get much attention so they’re very well hidden most of the times. Not paying from right to left direction is also can be very noticeable and because of it this slot simply can’t be so rewarding than the more popular cousin and generally said the big potential really miss from this slot. Other than that it really create a very beautiful and entertaining environment and that’s why I like to return to this game but if someone want to hit a Jackpot like win this game definitely couldn’t be a target destinations.

About Yggdrasil all I can say I like very much the work they put in creating the interface and it’s a good sign for me if a developer takes that much attention to make a good looking product. I believe (or I hope) they will concentrate that seriously the game segment and the overall rewarding system in the future and if they do that and can improve that parts of their product I’m sure they will face a very bright future, so I can wish them good luck and much perseverance for that and ‘Keep it going, guys’!

Robotnik is the last Yggdrasil slot here at AskGamblers that I have not yet played. All other Yggdrasil slots were good, very good, or exceptional (“Magic Mushrooms”). This last slot (maybe AskGamblers will add with time also others) it is very good towards exceptional.

The theme of the slot are the crystals and here all the crystals have shapes and colors exceptionally attractive. And of course the biggest and colorful crystals are the major symbols and pay about half as or equal as the total bet (40 cents/40 paylines) for “3 of a kind” and some good Euros for “5 of a kind”. The music that accompanies the spins is a modern version of a medley made of famous symphonic music songs (including “The Blue Danube” of Strauss). The graphics beauty of the slot is perfect, even better than the Microgaming or NetEnt quality.

I played on two different days at this slot. First time after the first 15 spins the robot appeared on reels 2 times and I have gathered over 40 Euro extra from the Wilds that it gave me. I thought that such a thing is impossible for a slot (40 Euros in the first 15 spins)! In fact this robot gives the name slot. It appears randomly on the reels (about once every 20-30 spins) to transform some random symbols on the reels in Wilds. And if you happen to have these Wilds on reels 1, 2 and 3 you always have one Big Win. The value of these Big Wins is incredibly high: 20-40-50 Euros from a single spin having a bet of 40 cents. And because Wilds appear on the reels also without the help of the robot ... everything is perfect. You are granted even a free respin when Wilds come alone (without the help of the robot). What would you say of some 75 Euro extra after the first 50 spins? I never had so many Big Wins playing a slot here. At one point, when I played the second time I had over 100 Euro extra!

This slot receives a rating from me close to the maximum possible, 9/10 just because occasionally has a downside.

The downside is the following: in about 25% of occasions, the robot places the Wilds on reels 4 and 5. It is very difficult to have a Big Win in these conditions. And there is maybe something else: here sometimes you can lose. :)