Compensated masquerading as random?

[BlindHaze]

There’s a game on PP called Hellcatraz, not sure if anyone’s played it but, like most games, most of the value is in the bonus. However, to get the bonus, you need to collect 2000 keys which randomly drop in on each spin. That’s right, 2000 of them. I played it on and off for about 2 weeks on 10p play and managed to hit it. I think the overall cost was about £50-£60. I recorded the bonus, if you’re bored it’s about a 3 minute long video.

I come from an era of compensated fruit machines in the 90s and if someone had just won, then it’d be hard to get any sort of return.  Although on Hellcatraz, each spin is random, it’s pretty much the same principle - it starts off playing like a 90s fruit machine that’s just paid out and you need to shove it full of money before you have a chance of getting anywhere. You’re very unlikely to get a profit if you just stick 50 spins through it.

There’s other games in a similar vein such as Monopoly Megaways (once again, you’re exceptionally unlikely to get a bonus without a lot of play) and also Wild Swarm to an extent. There’s also a new Megaways one on PP (whose name escapes me) where you have to collect maps before the symbols that run along the top open up. And also a Monopoly Utility one where you have to collect Electric Company and Waterworks symbols (albeit not 2000 of them....). I suppose if you were feeling a little harsh, you could also add games with pots in them - I suppose the more the game’s played, the bigger the pot.

Am I overthinking this? I really don’t want to start playing games like this where you know you’re off to a loser and have no chance unless you spend a fair bit of time on them.

[BarcrestArcades]

Games like this where you have to collect X amount of symbols for the bonus do run at a lower % if you dont play for the feature.

 

The way it works is lets say you need 10 Keys collected in total, on individual spins, to unlock the feature.

Lets say the bonus pays a long term average of 200x, as we need 10 keys to unlock the feature, a spin where a player gets a key is counted in the maths model as a 20x win. So when the player has 10 keys, they have the 200x average so it triggers the bonus.

To get the full % displayed on average, you will need to play until you get the feature and these games can be very deadly if chasing them on a high stake