Now I’ve played a lot of slots, trust me. Everyone from Playtech, RTG and Wagerworks, through Microgaming, OddsOn (Vegas Tech), Cryptologic and Chartwell. And up until now Chartwell slots were by far and away the most appalling slots I ever played to the extent where I wouldn’t have a Chartwell casino anywhere near my PC.
But guess what? I just found a contender for their (un)coveted crown and unbelievably, these slots seem to be everywhere! Correction - “this slot” would be more appropriate because from what I can see Orbis basically produce one slot and give it some different graphics (which generally aren’t too bad at all). Which probably means it’s cheap to produce, thus cheap to licence, ah…which probably explains why so many online casinos have it. Hey ho. Anyway it’s true, you should never judge a book by it’s cover…
Now to be fair, you can see what they’ve tried to do. Orbis have obvioulsy sent someone out to do some research and quite rightly they’ve come back and said “bonus slots are all the rage”. The players want free spins and bonus rounds and fancy graphics. Unfortunately, that someone forgot to mention that a slot also needs to be playable and give the player at least some impression that decent wins are possible. Maybe he died of boredom before he finished he report, or maybe someone upstairs said “Excellent. We have a £100 budget so let’s do it!”. Either way, the most important factor was overlooked. Fun!
In fact, the shock-horror concept of a player actually being able to win aside, they also neglected to realise that having one slot in lots of different skins will bore the pants off people, especially when the slot they are all based on was crap in the first place! And just for laughs, they proudly announced their “new slot” was ready (”Odd Shaped Balls”) when in fact what they should have announced was that their old slot was ready in a new skin.
And just to add insult to injury, they have 5-line and 9-line versions of the slot, usually in the same skins, just in case you struggle with the button that selects paylines on the 20-line version!! Otherwise it’s the same slot - of course.
By way of example, when you get the free spins (15 - 25), they come with a massive 1x multiplier by default. If you hit more than 5x your bet over the 15 spins, you’ve done well. Expect 2-3x and you’ll be happy. The bonus round is a pick ‘em bonus and again, anything over 5x is a plus. In about 10 bonus rounds while I was testing I once got 7x, all the rest were 2x-5x. In the 15/20 or so free spins rounds I hit, I once got 15x, and that was down to two retriggers! All the rest were 0.5x - 6x. Ooh…the excitement. Admittedly free spins happened more frequently than on other platforms, but in the end you can’t help but feel you are wasting your time. And money. For the record, the highest win I had in individual play was just over 17x (only one other win over 10x) and while testing I played 6 or so slots - well, 1 slot in 6 skins to be precise - and span around 1,500 spins.
So there you go. If you see any casinos offering slot games like the aforementioned “Odd Shaped Balls”, “Caribbean Nights”, “Gods Of The Nile”, “Funky Monkies II” or indeed any of the slots on this page, do yourself a favour and run a mile. I played them at Centrebet (which actually has a very good download casino with far beter slot offerings provided by Playtech) and thankfully the Orbis slots are only available via their website.
It cost me £200 to do this review and honestly, I don’t mind about the money but I do feel like asking for an hour of my life back. Possibly the most boring hour I’ve ever had at an online casino.
And if you don’t believe me, here’s a demo of the Orbis slot. Then download one of the Microgaming casinos in the list to the right and play some really decent slot games instead!