Sneak Video Preview: What to Expect From NetEnt’s New Sparks Slot

18+

You’ve got to wonder if someone at Net Entertainment has recently gone to a 1980’s disco and been inspired.

Because not only can expect the very retro Neon Staxx slot on June 24th, but now Net Entertainment have announced that July will see the electrically inspired Sparks Touch slot.

So what’s the deal with all this neon?

Perhaps the harsh bright light in the Summer sky called “The Sun”, a strange object to those swedish developers, made them all awkwardly aware of all the bright colours in the world?

Or perhaps the CEO simply loved the theme of the first and demanded a whole consortium of electric lights?

Lets have a look at at the slot video and see what the fuss is all about.

The Sparks Video Slot Preview

See? Neon everywhere.

We wouldn’t even say that it has a theme as such. Except if you call ‘neon’ a theme.

You’ve got Ace to 10 symbols, all brightly coloured blues, greens and purples, and then you have… electric atoms? Electric… sparks? We guess? For lack of a better word?

This is the mobile preview of the casino game because, as our name Lucky Mobile Slots might suggest, that’s kinda our thing.

You can view the online game preview on YouTube here, but it’s exactly the same.

Sometimes, simple is best

To be fair, we could spend our whole article making fun of the theme, but that’s only because it’s about the only thing that uninteresting about this mobile video slot.

Because actually, what NetEnt have done with the Sparks slot is kept things as simple as possible… but with a twist.

Always with a twist.

What we know for certain:

• It’s 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 paylines
• You can choose to play with the Win One Way or Win Both Ways modes
• You’ve got one feature only; wilds and expanding cloning wilds
• It has a high return to player rate (RTP) of 96.54%  to 96.56%
• Max win of 400 times your bet

But what does it all mean?

Honestly? We’re still not 100% sure. Mostly because the YouTube video is pretty, but you can’t see how the game will play properly.

The one thing that immediately caught our attention is the fact that you can choose to play so you get wins that pay left to right, or wins that pay both left to right and right to left.

So that must mean that one is harder hitting than the other… right? Well, not really. Sure, you are going to get more wins in the pay both ways mode, but the RTP difference is so marginal (0.02 of a percent) that it tells us that this could be nothing more than a gimmick.

It doesn’t appear to matter which way you play. So it’s really just giving you the illusion of choice.

Or at least, so it would appear, only testing the game will reveal how useful these ‘modes’ really are to experienced slot gamblers.

The real star of the Sparks slot game will be the expanding cloning wilds

Now here is a feature we can really get our 80’s teeth into and sing “We could be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky”.

What are expanding cloning wilds you ask?

Well clearly you couldn’t be bothered to watch the video, but that’s ok. We assumed you are reading this at work or public place, and are ready to explain it.

Basically you have normal wild symbols across all five reels. But then you also have the ‘expanding cloning wilds’ (that’s going to get boring to write real quickly) across reels 2 and 4.

When that symbol shows up it can choose to expand upwards, downwards, or in both directions. So far, so expandable. The cloning happens when any symbol to the left of the wild symbol then get’s cloned to the right of the wild as well.

Giving you a guaranteed minimum 3 of a kind win.

Now get both of these expanding cloning wilds on both reels (Exponing wilds? Clonexpand wilds? Come on, there’s got to be a shorter word than this) and you can potentially get some huge five of a kind wins.

It feels like a fairly easy playing game

That’s not a bad thing. When NetEnt slots decide to concentrate on just one big feature, and just that one, that can be truly magnificent.

Look at the recently released Stickers mobile slot, or the far more iconic Twin Spin or Starburst.

When they create one big feature, that works so well, you don’t need anything else to keep you satisfied.

Our concern here, other than the fairly generic theme, is whether the wins will be big, and constant enough, to keep us interested.

At only 400 times our bet max win, this could be anything from a low to mid variance game.

If on the lower end of the scale, we suspect that this Sparks slot machine will get fairly boring, quite quickly, a little like the pretty but uninteresting Lights Touch.

Oh ye, of little faith

That said, it’s our job to be cynical. We get anything from 5 to 10 new slot game previews a month, and it’s hard to be excited about each one.

However, if anyone deserves what little hopeful optimism we have in our shrivelled gamblers heart, it’s NetEnt.

After all, didn’t we love all three of the last releases, from Stickers, to Dracula, to Spinata Grande?

And if it’s NetEnt games that you love, then we’d recommend you check out Vera&John casino as you wait for the release of this Sparks video slot.

They are currently giving away 123 free spins to the UK on a selection of NetEnt slots, and everyone else still get an exclusive 10 free spins on Jack Hammer simply for registering.

It’s a great place to wait for these Neon slots to rock your world, 80’s style.