Power Plant slot review

The Power Plant Slot offers an electrifying experience for players that are looking to experiment! It’s also a testament to Yggdrasil’s drive to shake up the idea of what a slot should look like.

With a massive 8 rows x 5 reels playing field and 82 paylines, it strays away from the more common measurements of a slot. Each spin results in 5 reels of symbols dropping down and attempting to make connections.

While the game looks pretty bizarre, the more I played it the more I realised it’s still a classic slot. I remember playing this game for the first time and being quite turned away because of how it looked but the familiar gameplay kept me engaged.

While Power Plant has a beautiful yet moody animated intro, and the background of the slot is wonderfully done, the actual symbols are very small and bland. They remind me a lot of those used in games like Mega Man on the Nintendo 8-bit.

To be honest, I didn’t like the symbols back then and I still don’t now. I can understand they have to be smaller because there is less room on the playfield but why did they have to be so uninspired? Especially compared to the rest of the slot, the difference in quality strikes me as odd. They also barely fit the theme of a power plant, including symbols for water, wind and nature.

In contrast, the sound fits nicely combining an electric beat with laser sounds and the occasional sound effect.

Symbols

There are a total of 6 symbols and the Wild in the game. They are from highest to lowest:

• Wild: All Wilds are Stacked Wilds in Power Plant. Wilds substitute all other symbols in the game.
• Radioactive (orange): Max. 200 coins with five-of-a-kind on a payline.
• Fire (red): Max. 150 coins with five-of-a-kind on a payline.
• Electricity (purple): Max. 100 coins with five-of-a-kind on a payline.
• Wind (dark blue): Max. 70 coins with five-of-a-kind on a payline.
• Water (light blue): Max. 60 coins with five-of-a-kind on a payline.
• Nature (green): Max. 50 coins with five-of-a-kind on a payline.

One interesting thing I noticed is that it shows all the similar symbols that connect to each other as the reels come to a stop. This lets me instantly see which paylines are still in play. I wish more games would do this!

Features

Although Power Plant tries to look different from other slots, it uses popular existing features that anchored the gameplay for me.

• Stacked Wilds: All Wilds in the game are Stacked which means they come down stacked on top of each other on a single reel. It can happen that you get more than one reel with Stacked Wilds at the same time. It doesn’t always happen that the entire reel is filled with Wilds though.
• Feature Respin: If you get 1 or more entire reels filled with Stacked Wilds it triggers the Feature Respin, adding random modifiers before giving a free respin.

The Stacked Wilds appear almost every spin in my experience although they only rarely fill an entire reel. Having six different symbols made it rare to get a win without the aid of a Wild so it’s good that they show up regularly.

If the Feature Respin triggers, something new happens. It adds 2, 3 or 4 slots next to the playfield depending on how many reels were filled with Stacked Wilds. The game randomly selects modifiers to fill these slots before triggering a respin. I didn’t really understand what the different modifiers were so it also didn’t feel very interesting to see them pop up. I had to go into the Info screen to read more about them.

To save you from having to look it up yourself, the modifiers are:

• Identical symbols: Between 3 and 8 symbols on the playfield are replaced with the same symbol, making it more likely to get a win.
• Super Stack: 1 symbol is selected to be a Super Stack, filling an entire reel with the same symbol.
• Extra feature: This can only happen when there aren’t already 4 features unlocked.
• Nudges: Up to 4 reel nudges are enabled to maximize the win.
• Extra Wild: 1 symbol is selected to be an Extra Wild.

I’ve seen the Feature Respin trigger occasionally and even though the modifiers can be nice, I didn’t think they were that interesting since it’s only a Respin and not a new spin. When I got nothing out of the initial spin except for a reel filled with Stacked Wilds, the modifiers only helped a little in getting something better out of it. It felt like a lot of effort for a negligible gameplay effect.

In Conclusion

Power Plant is a slot that looks weirder than it plays. The graphics are rather mixed, with beautiful peripheral images but very blocky, small symbols that I didn’t care for at all because of a personal aversion to retro imagery.

Even though the playing field is shaped differently from what I’m used to it still plays mostly like a classic slot: the paylines run from left to right and it requires at least three-of-a-kind to get a win.

I stand by the game’s reported low volatility. The larger playfield makes it very likely to get a win but they are usually going to be small and consisting only of one or two paylines out of the maximum 82. Personally I prefer slots with medium or even high volatility because the excitement spike is bigger, but I can see why other people would prefer a steadier flow of small wins. In that case, Power Plant delivers.

The Feature Respin was nice but did not happen enough to really make an impact. Coupled with the fact it only triggered a single respin it felt underwhelming.

All in all, this game didn’t really scratch my gaming itch. The low volatility and the mediocre features left me aching for something a bit more exciting. Meanwhile, the small, ugly symbols quite annoyed me. I don’t think it’s a bad game, it just didn’t hit the right notes for me when it comes to what I look for in a slot. Which is too bad since I normally enjoy the games Yggdrasil releases!