Office Party: Slot Overview
Few things divide workplace opinion like the dreaded or joyful office party. Some people avoid them like the plague; others can’t wait to roll up their sleeves, get trolleyed and say all the things they’ve been aching to say to their colleagues throughout the year but can’t due to office decorum, social convention, and sobriety. For the team’s fourth release, it’s this workplace minefield that developer Shady Lady hasn’t so much walked into than leapt off a desk and belly busted into, all profanities and irreverent humour guns blazing.
Baxter & Carlson Stationaries is the company’s name, and management is either doing its best to keep a lid on costs or it hasn’t been a stellar year for sales. For one, the party is held in the office, where decorations include pennants hanging from the ceiling, some dubious snacks, and a piñata, which looks alarmingly alive. It’ll pretty soon become clear that the employees aren’t big fans of the boss because, at certain points, he hangs from the hook in place of the donkey as a human beat target, swinging about while a funky 80s/90s inspired soundtrack bass lines away.
Office Party drops 20 symbols onto a 5×4 gaming area, while a highly volatile math model provides the shindig’s behind-the-scenes engine. When betting 10 c to $/€100 per spin, the RTP comes in at 96.28%, though this may change when taking up the multitude of optional betting choices – Gimp Mode and so on, as detailed below.
A ways to win system means Office Party has 1,024 ways to win, left to right from the leftmost reel, and there are eight regular paying symbols. They are a ‘Kick Me!’ Post-it note, smiley meme guy, dice, a stapler embedded in a pudding, and four character symbols. Non-character symbols pay 0.5 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind combination, while 5 matching character symbol winning combinations pay 1.5x to 2x the bet. Wilds substitute any paying symbol and have the same payout values as the top character symbol.
Office Party: Slot Features
Whoever arranged this office party has ordered in three wild features, Weapon Lockers, Pinatas, a Severance Bonus, Gimp Mode, and various bonus buys. There is also a cascade mechanic that removes winning symbols and fills gaps by dropping symbols down from above.
Wild Features
Office Party comes with these three wild modifiers:
- Splashin’ Wilds – reels 2 to 4 can randomly be stacked with Splashing Wilds. If the right part of the stack lands and creates a win, players can expect more wilds.
- Smashin’ Wilds – randomly triggers in the base game, throwing 1 to 4 beer bottles at random positions on the grid. Beer runs down, covering the affected position and all positions below with wilds. One beer bottle may land per reel.
- Flashin’ Wilds – randomly triggers in the base game, where up to 4 streakers move by, each streaker placing 1 to 4 wilds to random positions on the grid.
Weapon Lockers and the Pinata
If a weapon locker falls down, it awards one hit of the piñata with a random weapon. Each hit provides the chance to knock the head off the piñata and trigger the bonus. Multiple weapon lockers may land on the same spin.
Severance Bonus
If the piñata’s head is knocked off, the Severance Bonus is triggered, which has four levels. At Level 1, four weapon types are available – Laptop, Trash Can, Office Chair, and Printer. Each one is assigned a multiplier. During the round, coin jars and weapon lockers drop onto the grid. If a weapon locker lands on a coin jar or a stack of coin jars, it crushes them and collects the coins inside. The total is multiplied by the weapon’s multiplier.
Whether a weapon locker crushes a jar or not, when it reaches the bottom of the grid, it delivers one hit to the Manager and upgrades the multiplier of all higher-class weapons. Each time the Manager is hit, there is a chance he is knocked down, and the bonus progresses to the next level. Each time the level upgrades, the lowest class weapon is removed from the rest of the round, and any stacks of jars collapse, collecting all coins in one jar at the bottom. The bonus continues till the grid is filled with jars, and no more symbols can land.
Gimp Mode, Bonus Boosters & Bonus Buys
When Gimp Mode is enabled, the probability of a weapon hit knocking the head off the piñata is halved, but if the bonus is triggered in Gimp mode, all weapons start with an x2 multiplier. Players are able to buy bonus round entry for 80x the bet (or 160x if in Gimp Mode), the best 3 results from 100, 300, or 500 spins for 66x, 162x, or 236x the bet, respectively, or Loot Boxes.
Office Party: Slot Verdict
Apple and Samsung, Coke and Pepsi, Boeing and Airbus, the business world is full of rivalries, and one might argue a friendly rivalry is starting to brew between Shady Lady and long-standing tricksters of the gambling world Nolimit City. Let’s emphasise the friendly part of that sentence and say this is just a fun way of pointing out the similarities between Office Party and something Nolimit City might make, Nine To Five, for instance. Both have a vaguely Beavis and Butthead-like attitude as they celebrate an aspect of modern life that can be both necessary and utterly soul-destroying.
It can also be quite rewarding, not just financially, but friendships are forged in the office trenches, romances blossom, and gossip makes the day nip by. Still, a bad boss is a bad boss, and Sam Coke MD has annoyed enough colleagues to warrant stringing up and smacking around with office weapons. In other words, Office Party is another tongue-in-cheek Shady Lady slot built on uncommon slot themes, delivering uncommon features. The main bonus game is certainly singular, a hold ‘n’ win-ish, yet not, type round that’s like playing My Suika but with money jars instead of fruit. Coin jars clogging up reels can kill the mood, but they may be reduced when levelling up. Levelling up the weapon multiplier is critical as well because, without substantial values on board, it might be tough to visualise hitting the game’s 20,000x max win.
At the end of the working day, at that sweet moment of clocking out both physically and mentally, Office Party might be a little over the top for some sensitivities, which is kind of the point, a little unrefined when compared to the polish Nolimit City is able to squeeze into its games, but it remains another unique Shady Lady endeavour that dares to go where few other software providers would.
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