At the Copa slot review

At The Copa brings the player to the snazzy dance club that offers people that visit great music, nice company and an exciting night. For the players that are coming along, they can expect 3 progressive jackpots, free spins and a bonus game.

This slot was developed by Betsoft and released back in 2012. Just like most slots of that time, that means poorly-dated 3D graphics and a pretty solid gameplay experience. The 5-reel, 3-row playing field takes up most of the screen, leaving little room for details in the background. The main thing to take note of is the lady standing next to the slot. This does mean the tiles themselves get a lot of room to show off the symbols.

The symbols look rather outdated due to the low details and the lack of animations. They do convey the setting very well though, containing things like cocktails, instruments and different characters. The slot does not use any traditional low-paying symbols like card letters or card suits. In total, the game has 30 paylines on which to win, which results in the slot having Medium Volatility.

When it comes to the music, it’s probably easy to imagine what the developers went with. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as inventive as that. During the base game, spinning the reels will only play the shaking of maracas. It’s when you get any win that it will play a brief tune. What I did like was that the tune depends on the winning symbols: trumpets when you have trumpets on a win line, drums when there’s drums, etcetera.

Symbols

At The Copa is getting older and it shows in the graphics. The symbols are all crafted with the help of a 3D program but they have started to look outdated. The details are few, the textures are smooth and it’s all static. When compared to newer games it’s clear why this style of graphics has fallen out of fashion for many developers.

Still, they are clear and easy to tell apart, although they can start to merge together somewhat as the game continues. Whenever there’s a win, the tiles involved will be enlarged and the winning pay line will show on the screen. It will also give the player the total coin win.

Since there aren’t too many symbols, there are quite a few paylines and there are barely any features to influence the gameplay it lands on medium volatility. This will translate into getting smaller wins a bit more regular, but still being dependent on large wins if you want to end up with more funds than you started with. In my experience, my funds took a rather sharp dive from the moment I started playing and never recovered.

To deal with this, players can pick a bet between £0.02 and £150 per spin which is obviously quite a range. On top of that, the listed max. win of 430,000x your bet seems somewhat excessive. Do keep in mind that this is likely based on the progressive jackpot, meaning that you will almost never actually see anything close to that.

When it comes to the symbols in the slot, they are:

• Dance Shoe (Scatter): Get 3 Scatter symbols on the screen to activate the free spins mode.
• Chili Pepper (Bonus): Get 5 Bonus symbols on the screen to win a jackpot.
• Wild: Wilds will substitute all symbols except the Scatter and Bonus symbols.
• Lady: Max. 500 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Man #1: Max. 300 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Man #2: Max. 300 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Flamingo: Max. 100 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Drums: Max. 50 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Maracas: Max. 25 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Trumpet: Max. 25 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Cocktail: Max. 25 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.

Features

At The Copa keeps things light with the number of features included in the game. To start with, a brief overview of the features themselves:

• Wild: Wilds substitute all regular symbols in the game. If a Wild appears on reel 3, it will become a Stacked Wild.
• Multiplier: When the Stacked Wild is activated it will trigger a re-spin. During this re-spin, a 2x multiplier is active. If there is a win in this spin, another spin is triggered with a 3x multiplier. This continues as long as new wins are created or the game hits a 5x multiplier.
• Free Spins: With 3 Scatter Symbols on the screen, the free spins mode is activated. During the Free Spins mode, every spin grants a multiplier between 2x and 10x.
• Bonus Round: Get the Lady symbol between Man #1 and Man #2 to trigger the bonus round. The two men will dance for the lady’s hand in an animated sequence.
• Progressive Jackpot: Get 5 Chili Peppers on the screen to win 1 of the 3 progressive jackpots. The size of the Chili Peppers decides which jackpot is granted.

Although I liked the idea of the different features, they all prove intensely difficult to trigger. During my time playing, I only saw the bonus round once and I never had either the progressive jackpot or the free spins mode trigger. Even getting a Stacked Wild on reel 3 prove to be almost impossible.

In that sense, this slot is very volatile as I saw my funds drop relentlessly while I was playing. It really requires any of these features to activate to have any shot at compensating for your losses.

In Conclusion

At The Copa is a slot that is very popular amongst players and it can be seen why. The slot offers a number of features that can quickly turn the tide for anyone. The problem to me was that they barely activated and it resulted in me simply losing all of my funds in a single session.

It got to the point where I had to go through the paytable to see what the features were as they simply wouldn’t trigger for me. This alone would put the game in the high volatility class but it is still listed as medium. Do be aware of this when you give the slot a try, and perhaps start off with a lower bet before you get a feeling of its gameplay.

The graphics are somewhat outdated but that doesn’t matter as long as the slot is fun to play. I did enjoy my time with it but without most of the features activating it made for a rather bland experience.