Incinerator Review

28 Aug 2023
Jacob

DEVELOPER: YGGDRASIL GAMING
RTP: 96 – 98%
GAME TYPE: SLOT GAMES
THEME: SCI-FI
BONUS TYPE: Line and Symbol Modifier(s)

7.6

MEDIOCRE

USER AVG.

“Very impressive, Lone Starr. Too bad this isn’t the Wild World of Sports.”

Ever wondered what happens to the mountains of garbage we dispose of every day? Set on a desolate planet set aside for industrial waste disposal Incinerator, a 5 reel 20 payline slot released by Yggdrasil Gaming, invites us to wonder while salvaging scrap for vast profit!

With recent hits including “Cyrus the Virus” and “Cazino Zeppelin”, Yggdrasil Gaming have positioned themselves as an innovative software studio offering trendy, fast paced, and story driven games. Incinerator continues in this vein and seems to be a worthy addition to this Malta based developer’s catalogue.

Incinerator’s introduction sequence, which begins with the player approaching a desolate “Junk Planet” from space before descending through strata of abandoned machinery to a menacing post-industrial soundtrack, is a joy to behold. It is suggested that we find ourselves inside the eponymous Incinerator, perhaps salvaging equipment for reward. This author was reminded strongly of the PlayStation 1 classic Oddworld: Abe’s Odysee, a game with which Incinerator shares several themes and a certain dark, retro charm.

The game screen itself is well presented, with futuristic industrial equipment serving as paying symbols. We’ve awkwardly named them space tyre, fridge, pyramid, evil eye, pill bottle and undefined yellow; they make a welcome change from typical playing cards. There is also a nice effect when you activate a winning payline as symbols explode with the Cascading Reels feature (more in gameplay) and are replaced by symbols above.

The game is colourful, utilising strong colours to represent and distinguish the symbols – chasing the bonus symbol (Freefall symbol) and mapping the wilds to the completing paylines is as easy as it gets.

Ultimately a large part of a slot’s playability derives from game flow, mechanics, win distribution and “feel”, rather than fancy visual effects or even mega-jackpots. How else can we explain the continued success of dated greats like Cleopatra or Book of Ra when bleeding edge slots with console style effects flood the market? The key is combining those features in a way which engages players and, luckily, Incinerator is a very playable game irrespective of its simple mechanics and retro graphics. There is not much by way of user interaction, but I find Cascading Reel based games to be engaging almost because of their simplicity.

With neither bonus games nor a progressive jackpot, Incinerator is unlikely to appeal to monster jackpot hunters or lovers of interactive, multi bonus slots. However, Cascading Reels and the Wild Pattern feature combine to create a fresh, if unremarkable, gameplay experience.

While playing Incinerator you will discover the biggest wins are achieved after going on a huge run of wins/wild patterns. The attraction of Cascading Reels is not universal, while some players enjoy the gradual accretion of wins, others find the long animation sequences frustrating. In my playthrough I found it quite common to completely wipe the screen of all symbols, which looks impressive but actually reduces the frequency of 5OAK wins.

As you can see in the “testing” section, the vast majority of your wins from Incinerator will come from triggering a Wild Pattern, which occurs around once every 25 spins. Triggering multiple Wild Patterns consecutively (1/100 spins) will almost guarantee a decent payout of 35x bet or more. If you’re unlucky enough to go on a long run without bonus games however, you may find your balance drops quite quickly!

Using a free-to-play version of Incinerator I ran and recorded 500 individual spins, each time with a coin value of €1 (€20 total bet). It should be noted that over my sample my results were net positive; a win of €1620 equating to a nice, but somewhat unexpected, RTP of 116.4%! Nonetheless, I was able to gauge the relative frequency of wins and activation of bonus games.

In my sample 381 spins (76.2%) yielded no win at all, while a further 69 (13.8%) gave wins which were either less than the bet size or breakeven. The most valuable spins were undoubtedly those which activated Wild Patterns. The 19 instances (3.8% or approx 1/25) when this occurred yielded €8847 of the €11640 total gross wins in my play through (76.0%). All of my largest wins, ranging from €723-1700, came from the 6 occasions when multiple Wild Patterns were triggered.

# Wild Patterns	Wins	Average Win (€)	Average Win (bet multiple)
1	32, 75, 80, 82, 106, 137, 184, 197, 219, 255 305, 315, 420	185.15	9.26
2	723, 744, 923, 1054, 1700	1028.8	51.44
3	1676	1676	83.8

On a further 34 occasions a Cascade was triggered after a win without subsequently activating a Wild Pattern. These spins yielded an average win of €37.2 (profit of €17.2 or 0.8x bet). While Cascade spins yielded an average profit; the average result of 66 winning spins without any bonus features was €17.41, or a loss of €2.59.

Variance is a measure of average differences from the expected or “mean” result”. Simply put; a game with small regular payouts, like Blackjack, will generally have a lower standard deviation than a game with long shot “jackpots” like Roulette number bets or jackpot slots. Therefore, high variance games tend to be prone to more wild swings.

Over the 500 Spin RTP Challenge I observed a standard deviation (a measure of variance) of €76.4/spin, after standardisation to a €1 bet size allowing for easy comparison. By contrast the standard deviation of a single number “straight” bet in Roulette is just €5.76/spin. Although this high measured variance may be, in part, due to my unexpectedly high number of Wild Pattern wins it is clear that Incinerator is not a straightforward, low variance slot.

Visually Incinerator is pleasing but unspectacular, befitting a game which is as functional as its title. There are few bells and whistles but the limited selection still works well and the maths seems well suited for a newish player to enjoy the game.

Incinerator is an an enjoyable and compelling game; largely because of its amusingly twisted premise. While we are inundated with Classical Gods, tropical backdrops and film franchises, those few “dark” slots that exist are primarily pastiche or Hammer Horror knock offs; this author would take a dose of hard-hitting post industrial desolation any day!

7.6

MEDIOCRE