Mine Defender: Slot Overview
Mining, oh boy, here we go again, players, down the old shaft to punch tunnels in the rock with a grizzled yet upbeat old-timey miner in order to collect nuggets and gems. But wait, in a blast of creativity, Mine Defender from software provider ELK Studios takes the venerable online slot mining genre in an unforeseen direction, doing away with the usual cliches to deliver something enjoyably different. Its gameplay, too, whilst built around a scatter pays mechanism, injects some old-school Space Invaders elements to produce a unique mining experience.
If Mine Defender is, broadly speaking, a mining-themed game, it is not the sort of slot that sees gamblers traipsing down mine shafts to meet a bearded, overall-wearing prospector as is usually the case. Instead, players step underneath ‘the wreckage of a broken world’ where man and machine do battle with enemy robots. These aren’t just empty words, either. The dude you can see at the bottom of the screen literally shoots at enemies when they start invading the screen, as well as their leaders in boss battles with potentially sizable amounts of dough on the line. Complementing the pixelated qualities in the artwork is a mesmerising synthwave soundtrack, which, when combined, may awaken memories of an earlier age of gaming.
Mine Defender is a medium volatile slot played on a 5×6 grid utilising a scatter pays mechanic to evaluate winning combinations. Players may stake 20 c to $/€100 per game round as they attempt to pop enemies and bosses if they manage to progress so far into the game. With several X-iter bonus buys on board, Mine Defender’s RTP clocks in at 94%, no matter how it is played.
Hitting 7 or more identical pay symbols anywhere on the grid creates a winning combination and a payout. All 8 pay symbols are gemstones, and generally speaking, the bigger the gemstone, the greater its payout value. Combinations of 7 OAK are worth 0.2 to 1 times the bet, rising to 5 to 100 times the bet for landing a 15+ matching symbol combination. Occasionally, wilds may appear on the reels to substitute for any regular paying symbol.
Mine Defender: Slot Features
A spin in Mine Defender starts by symbols filling the grid, a reset win multiplier, a Hero and 1 shot. Any feature symbols on the grid are collected, triggered, and replaced with new symbols. After winning symbols payout, they are removed, and symbols drop downwards to fill empty spaces. This cycle repeats as long as wins keep appearing.
Hero Drops
As symbols drop, enemies possessing 1, 2, or 3 lives may randomly enter the grid. This triggers Hero drops, where the Hero tries to defeat the enemies by shooting them. Enemies shot by the Hero lose a life. Defeated enemies are replaced by feature symbols or pay symbols before the win evaluation. After the evaluation, any enemies on the bottom row attack the Hero, taking a life, and are destroyed, while other enemies move 1 step closer to the bottom row unless blocked. If there are no wins, all pay symbols are removed, and new symbols drop in. When the Hero has no lives left, the game ends. Alternatively, enemies on the bottom row may malfunction, destroying themselves and all other enemies or Mini Bosses on the same row.
Features and Feature Symbols
The list of features and feature symbols in Mine Defender includes:
- Life – adds 1 life to the Hero up to 3.
- Shot – increases the number of shots the Hero can fire in each shooting round up to 3.
- Spread – enables the Hero to shoot 3 projectiles per shot.
- Bonus Scatter – is collected towards the bonus game trigger.
- Coin – pays its displayed instant win amount multiplied by the win multiplier.
- Multiplier – adds to the global win multiplier.
- Mystery – spawns an enemy, feature, or wild symbol.
- Airstrike – deals 3 damage to 1 to 6 enemies (including bosses).
- Laser – fires a beam that defeats all enemies in 1 column (Mini Bosses or the Final Boss lose 3 lives).
- Pushback – moves all enemies 1 step back.
- Bombs – deal 3 damage to all enemies and bosses on the grid.
Mini Bosses
Mini Bosses randomly appear in the base game only as 2×2 sized enemies with 10 lives and a trophy coin. When defeated, they are removed from the reels and pay their trophy coin multiplied by the global win multiplier.
Mass Attack Bonus Game
Collecting 3 bonus scatters triggers the bonus game. Any multipliers, shots, and spread collected in the base game are carried over the bonus round, and the Hero’s lives are set to 3. The bonus game is played on a circular grid with spoke-like rows and the Hero in the centre. Enemies attack the Hero from the inner row as they do in the base game. The round ends when the Hero is defeated or the Final Boss mode triggers.
Final Boss Battle
The Final Boss battle triggers when 50 enemies, including Mini Bosses, have been defeated, which may happen in the base game or bonus mode. The Final Boss battle takes place on a 5×6 grid, landing enemies, coins, and multipliers. A 3×3 Final Boss with 50 lives and a trophy coin appears. The round ends when the Final Boss or the Hero is defeated.
X-iter
Opening up the X-iter menu is where players may buy the Bonus Hunt for 3x the bet, which is a game round with more than triple the chance of triggering a bonus game. 10x buys Hero Drops, which is a game round guaranteeing enemies activate a Hero Drops battle, or Maxed Ammo for 50x to guarantee enemies and max 3 shots ammunition for the Hero. 100x buys the bonus round, whereas 500x buys the bonus round where the Hero has the max 3 shots of ammunition.
Mine Defender: Slot Verdict
So, who was expecting a mining slot like that, huh? Game designers, while resting on their laurels and ripping off each other’s work on one hand, are also just as adept at coming up with fresh ideas. Well, some studios offer greater outpourings of creativity than others, and ELK Studios is one of those outfits that consistently surprises in areas such as theme choice and handling, not to mention feature ideas. Mine Defender is another original production, shoving most of the subterranean slot cliches to the side, not only to bring in newer on-screen components but linking them to the gameplay at various points, as well.
Admittedly, the gaming side of Mine Defender did bring back memories not only of what Print Studios have done but also of ELK Studios’ own Orbitfall, released about a year or so earlier. The two slots are actually quite different to each other in practice, but shooting enemies links them, as does the nostalgic trip back in time vibe. One obvious difference is the bonus round since Mine Defender shifts the action to shooting in various directions on a peculiarly aligned game board as enemies march towards the Hero. In some ways, the Final Boss tantalises with the prize value it displays, but in other ways, it also seems to put a limit on how much the final payout may be – and that’s if you can defeat it.
It is technically possible to win up to 10,000x the bet in Mine Defender, so hopefully, things like the win multiplier and shot number or spread stacks before getting to the big showdowns. Besides, decent wins are achievable without making it to the Final Boss round anyway. All up, ELK Studios has made another enjoyable video game/slot crossover, which won’t be to all tastes, but for a casino game that dares to do new things with the theme and its gaming parts, Mine Defender warrants a prospect.
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