Spectra

Spectra is a futuristic looking 5 reels, 30 payline slot from Thunderkick with neon style visuals. The main attractions are wild nudges and wild re-spins which hit at regular intervals. Minimum bet is a $0.10 which is the standard for most Thunderkick slots no matter how many pay lines it has.

The symbols on the reels look like they’ve been created in neon which cover all colours of the spectrum, hence the name Spectra The slot has many symbols and the pay tables look very low, but for bar and wild it looks decent for the minimum bet on 30 pay lines. Bar symbol will pay x10 your stake for 5 of kind and Wild will pay x20 your stake for 5 of kind. With 30 paylines full screens can pay x300 and x600 respectively. The slot does not have any scatters or free spins. The symbols come in stacked form, as well as wild come in stacked form.

The slot however has re-spin feature. Whenever wild or w symbol lands on the reels, a free re-spin is awarded, before the re-spin the wild symbol nudges towards the middle of the reels trying to create bigger wins. Should another wild symbol lands on another reel, another free re-spin is awarded and wilds nudges towards the centre of the reel. You can trigger up to 5 re-spins and of course if this happens you will have at least a couple 5 of kind wild wins on the final spin. All re-spins wins are added and the total awarded in the end of the re-spins.

I like this slot a lot, however empty spins occur most of my sessions but I have had some decent hits on this slot. Not fit for wagering requirements at all. Also before starting make sure you have a good budget, because your first 20 spins could be all dead. The slot is highly volatile.

Thunderkick launched this game at Casumo exclusively for a short while last month and I took the opportunity to give it a try early on as the promotional video reminded me a lot of their "Arcader" game, a slot which I've really been enjoying lately. There are many similarities between the games such as the stacked symbols, basic graphical style and retro sound effects however these are by no means just clone slots of the type we seem to be getting fed more and more these days by Microgaming and NetEnt.

Stacked wilds are a favourite feature of mine and this game not only provides them on all reels but any time one appears in view you are awarded an automatic respin before which the stack will nudge towards the centre of the reels meaning if you had three on screen when the reels stopped you will have all four for your respin. Better yet, if you land another wild in view during your respin the first stack remains in place for your second respin and this process continues until you have a wild on all the reels at once which is presumably how you might achieve the games stated maximum payout of 2400x your stake.

The 30 paylines are a little low for a 5x4 reel game, but I didn't notice this as much as I would expect whilst playing the game. Like most Thunderkick games winning combinations are highlighted sequentially as each of the five reels comes to a stop, so there's no disappointment at the end of the spin where you think you should have scored a win but did not. Whereas on some games I'll take a look at the line diagrams on the paytable to get an idea of which combinations will return a win this feature renders that redundant and I really like it.

I was starting to worry that Thunderkick were all about the glitzy graphics and weren't putting enough thought into the actual play mechanics of their slot games but this is the second title of theirs that I have really enjoyed recently despite the fact this game doesn't have a proper bonus round... imagine that! I would have liked to see a higher maximum win possible but 2, 400x your stake really isn't bad and I've had a decent number of wins over 100x my stake in a very short period of time. It's not perfect by any means but it's attractive, fun and pays well - what more can you ask for ?

Thunderkick has remained as one of my favourite games provider ever since they came into the market in 2014. I do still love playing some of their games, but don't quite like some of the others, mainly due to their low paytables and lack of desirable features in the games. Hopefully, with more and better experiences through these years, maybe one day Thunderkick can finally join and be one of those established bigger names.

There was a time back in 2014 when I complained to Thunderkick's representative about their using 8-bit graphics for their games. No doubt they were still experimenting with that, but I'm glad that their newer games are moving away from 8-bits and getting back to the contemporary. Spectra is one of the latest releases from them, utilising very simple basic forms and shapes, a touch of the 8-bit graphics, but transforming the entire 2D presentation with nice 3D animations and visual effects. I must admit, for a very simple game, Spectra looks good, plays nicely and keeps my interest in the game going. A few creative innovations can be seen too, like the absence of payline numbering, being replaced with indicating symbols instead. This is nothing new for thunderkick, because all of their previous 'old' games never had any paylines indication at all.

I was probably one of the few people to have played Spectra when it became available at Casumo. From first sight alone, I knew it must be from Thunderkick, as I'm familiar with its graphical presentation traits. Spectra plays with 30 paylines. 'W' is the Wild symbol, paying 20x the total bet for 5 of them, comes stacked on all reels with 4 symbols per stack, and substitutes for all symbols. There are no Scatter symbols in this game. Each Wild appearing on the reels awards 1 Respin, nudging upwards or downwards towards the center of the reels in the next spin, and ending if no new Wild appears onto the reels. This is what makes Spectra plays differently from any other game, except for 'DJ Wild', which has something similar to the nudging Wilds.

Paytable wise, typical to Thunderkick, all symbols tend to have lowish win values attached to them. The BAR pays 10x, '7' pays 7x, Bell pays 4x, Leaf pays 3x, whilst all the other shapes pay 2.2x to 1.4x the total bet, all for 5 of each kind. This make the paytable a very low one, especially when playing with only 30 paylines. So yet again, do not expect huge wins from Spectra, just accept the good and decent payouts and the game will be more fun and entertaining.

I have to be fair and say that I haven't had enough spins played on Spectra to give a better insight on its gameplay. From my free spins play, plus one of my own deposit, I quite enjoyed the game, the animations and the visual effects were nice, vibrant and colourful, but the nice decent payouts have yet to come. With more longer plays on Spectra, more will be revealed in time, but I just had to make some comments right now, and give some idea on how this game would play and pay. Hope you all will have better times than I did.