It saddens me to think that if you shouted “No whammies, no whammies… stop!” in a room full of Millenials, there’s a chance no one would get the reference. So it’s possible that Press Your Luck Slots by Ludia is intended to appeal to an older audience, though Facebook gamers of all ages may get a kick out of this slots game inspired by the classic game show. And you won’t even need a big red button to play.
It saddens me to think that if you shouted “No whammies, no whammies… stop!” in a room full of Millenials, there’s a chance no one would get the reference. So it’s possible that Press Your Luck Slots by Ludia is intended to appeal to an older audience, though Facebook gamers of all ages may get a kick out of this slots game inspired by the classic game show. And you won’t even need a big red button to play.
Like Ludia’s previous foray into game show-themed slots, The Price Is Right Slots, this one features a variety of five reel machines with multiple paylines and several different bonus games. The big difference is that while the pricing games lent themselves naturally to being turned into their own slots, the only really memorable part of Press Your Luck was the Big Board. Unless you want to answer trivia questions while playing a Facebook slots game, which would just be weird.
Instead, Press Your Luck Slots opts to use generic themes for its machines and dresses the Whammy up appropriately to reinforce them. That doesn’t mean they’re not good, just not super creative. There’s a pirate machine, an Egyptian machine with the Whammy done up like a pharaoh, and so on. Only the pirate game is available to you at first, though the three others unlock at level 6, 10 and 15 by earning experience points with each credit played.
Each machine has its own bonus round activated by finding three scatter symbols on the reels three times. They have to be on valid paylines to count, a fact that the Whammy will remind you of in his own inimitable fashion. These bonus games have a welcome element of skill, too, like clicking on symbols that appear in two different groups of images as quickly as possible to increase your bonus multiplier.
The Big Board makes its appearance as a shared bonus round on all machines, and it’s just as much fun as you non-teenage readers remember. For the rest of you, the board contains a number of squares with different bonus multipliers, and a light randomly moves around waiting for you to click on the big red button in the middle to stop it. Stop on a bonus amount and it gets added to your total. Hit a Whammy and he takes your winnings, leaving you with a measly 20x bonus. Every time you succeed, you have the choice of keeping what you’ve made so far or to, ahem, press your luck and try for more on a board with more Whammies.
Another scatter bonus sees the Whammy show up to either halt your free spin fun or get whacked and turn into a Wild symbol. It’s another cute way of incorporating the character, but it plays out very slowly, and after a few of these rounds you may find yourself wishing you could just resume spinning normally.
Press Your Luck Slots has other features that are pretty standard for Facebook slots games, like sending gifts to friends, progressive jackpots and a coin bonus that reloads every four hours – or every two hours when Ludia puts the game in Turbo Mode. These are fine but not especially noteworthy in any way, much like the music that plays on each machine while spinning the reels. The Whammy animations are the standout aspects of the game’s visuals, faithful to the way he was rendered on screen back in the 80s and early 90s.
What it all boils down to is this: If you like the Whammy, even if he’s a new face to you, Press Your Luck Slots is going to be worth a few minutes of your time for a tryout. And if that mischievous cackle fills you with dread, well, Ludia would like to remind you that The Price Is Right Slots is always an attractive option.
