Cosmo Slots
What do you see when you look up to the sky at night? Simply the blanket that keeps the atmosphere in, or a universe of possibilities, in turn giving way to an almost-infinite number of other universes that have equal prospects?
Whatever the answer is, it probably doesn’t have much bearing on whether you will enjoy this intergalactic, stripped-back, three reel game from GameScale. Cosmo Slots is the machine in question, and to say it’s pretty simple to pick up would be an understatement. First, though, let’s look at what it looks like.
Well, not that much, if we’re being honest. The graphics and animation are what you might describe as ‘functional’. There’s no added bells or whistles, really, all we’re given is a basic visual display showing a one-armed bandit, with a background that is supposed to represent a bar. The one problem being you have to supply the booze, perhaps it’s best we cut to the chase and get straight to how the whole thing plays.
Space invaders
So Cosmo Slots is themed on aliens and space invaders. When the screen loads up you will immediately see the three reels ready to spin, a place for you to ‘INSERT BILLS’ (actually you just have to click on this when prompted to top up your coin reserves in the machine itself), and the paytable at the top of the screen- this tells you what different wins are worth.
The idea of the game is to match up three of a kind across the reels. So that could be three comets, three purple Saturn-like planets, three rockets, three little green men- or their heads at least- and three flying saucers. Each has a different value when you win, and the flying saucers also have different win values depending on which payline you land them on. Next question, then- what’s a payline?
To the moon and back
Paylines are predetermined ‘routes’ across the reels – only landing a winning combination on an active payline counts as an actual win. Fear not, though, Cosmo Slots only has 3 paylines and these are active all the time. Furthermore, these are irrelevant apart from the flying saucers, so you really have nothing to worry about.
That might sound quite limited to more experienced gamblers, and it is, but then that’s the case with three reel slot machines on the whole. In contrast, you can adjust the amount of money you want to put down on an individual bet – in the bottom of the screen there are options; 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2 and 5. The more you put in, the more you stand the chance of picking up when you win. Capiche?
Warp drive
On the one hand, then, Cosmo Slots doesn’t seem like it has that much to offer. We would happily have to disagree, though. In a word – playability. The replay compulsion with this game is ridiculous, because it really is just so simple to pick up and play. Whereas other games offer a ton of bells and a bucketload of whistles, here we have a game that’s really about the fundamentals of gaming.
The one slight issue with its ‘quick fire’ USP is the fact that by loading in coins when prompted to the ‘INSERT BILLS’ slot, you do break up the momentum. However, considering how easy it would be to pour in Euro after Euro (even if you’re not in the Eurozone the currency is set to Euro) without even really noticing. The point being that slowing that down a little isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Out of this world?
On the whole, then, Cosmo Slots isn’t the prettiest, or the most expansive gambler on the market. In fact, it’s pretty standard on the scale of 3-reel bandits, and up against 5 reels its definitely rather limited. Don’t let that put you off, though.
From the moment you fire up the reels it becomes clear that this is a game you’ll be spending a lot of time with. The images are so distinct and easy to differentiate it feels like a well-conceived product, rather than something that simply has the cheapest possible visuals from the least amount of effort on the part of the developers. It might sound almost insignificant but this really does count in the long run.
In short – recommended, albeit we weren’t expecting that to be the case.
