Platooners is a very simple game, executed incredibly well and full of bright, enjoyable characters and situations. Remember the video game Worms? This is quite like that: effortless fun and crazy weapons and explosions, but with the less-common attribute of paying out obscene lumps of cash to lucky players!
ELK Studios is truly one of the world’s finest developers nowadays, and Platooners is easy testament to that!
Theme
Travel deep into the jungle where your stalwart Platooners are ranging forth, searching for enemies to attack with their colourful array of weapons!
Gameplay Overview & Symbols
As soon as Platooners loads up on your screen, you just know it’s going to be a top-quality game. There’s a movie-quality opening sequence, and the characters are almost lifelike; well, they would be if they weren’t strange little bean people.
The game has 5 reels and 20 symbols, with a total of 178 ways to win! With the wager limit set at a lofty $100 per spin, there are big prizes up for grabs! The 3 protagonists (who we meet in that opening sequence) are platooners: rockets, grenades, and bullets. Fittingly, the symbols include all sorts of army gear and equipment (swords, medical packs, ID tags, and binoculars) as well as some funky options like a serpent’s head, which acts as the game’s bonus symbol.
Platooners also has the trendy feature of offering automatic betting strategies:
- Optimizer – Wagers a specific percentage of the player’s cash balance.
- Leveller – Raises the bet two levels after 5 consecutive losses, up to 3 raises.
- Booster – Raises the bet one level after a loss, up to four consecutive losses.
- Jumper – Raises the bet one level after a win, up to four consecutive wins.
In addition to all of this, there are three randomly-activated base-game features, one for each of the three platooners:
- Rockets – Places stacked reels of matching symbols over reels 1 and 3.
- Grenades – Adds an array of wilds to reels 3, 4, and 5.
- Bullets – Adds symbols to create a 5-of-a-kind payout, aligning with one of the symbols on reel 1.
Platooners vs Snakes of Fortune
There are quite a lot of fun bonus rounds out there nowadays, but “Snakes of Fortune” in Platooners is one of the best. Basically you’re placed into a boss round, against a giant, angry snake.
Basically once you get the 3 bonus symbols required to unlock the round, you get matched against either an easy, medium, or hard boss. This turns out to be a large, very large, or seriously large snake, made up of coins representing cash prizes. If this doesn’t make much sense, then don’t worry: it’s all clear while you’re playing!
Rather than free spins, you get rounds of ammo and your 3 platooners fire their weapons repeatedly at the snake. If you get 3, 4, or 5 bonus symbols, you’ll have 1, 2, or all 3 platooners firing at once on every “spin”. The more damage they do, the more cash you win! Players can earn hundreds of times their stake with just one chance at this round, so it is incredibly powerful!
Our Verdict
Between the hilarious characters, the lucrative bonus round and the in-game special features, there is a lot to like about Platooners. It’s almost one of those rare slots where winning (at least making a profit) is an afterthought: you can definitely imagine players having a go at this just for the fun of playing!
