Scara-Bucks: Slot Overview
Software provider Yggdrasil Gaming has slapped on the SPF 50 sunscreen and taken a virtual journey to the Middle East to design the Ancient Egyptian-themed online slot Scara-Bucks. For this desert adventure, the studio has made a cluster pays game, where winning symbols queue up a bunch of modifiers. It’s a tried and true formula to be sure, but Scara-Bucks goes one step further to help ensure playability by being a virtual feature-for-feature copy of Play’n GO‘s slot Reactoonz. Oh well, suppose if you’re going to copy a game, it might as well be a good one, so why don’t we find out how well the transition from space critters to desert has fared?
Ancient Egypt it is, and when choosing where to locate Scara-Bucks, Yggdrasil Gaming has settled on a sandy spot, open to the sky, where the brutal desert sun can beat down. Gold coins lie spilt all over the ground; they’re big and chunky, too. Just one of them would be good to lay hands on. It might be tricky to grab them, though, because standing over the scene is a staff-bearing pharaoh-type individual, dissuading shifty characters from turning up to just take the riches. Ironic in a way, because Scara-Bucks has no qualms taking the features and gameplay directly from another slot.
Scara-Bucks plays out on a 7×7 grid, using a cluster pays mechanic where wins form whenever 5 or more matching symbols connect horizontally or vertically. Each win clears the successful symbols from the board, letting new ones tumble in to potentially chain fresh clusters together. This cascading sequence continues until no more wins appear. Bets range from 20c to $/€70 per spin, and with high volatility in play, the slot can deliver some intense swings. Out of three available RTP settings, the top one clocks in at 96%.
Scara-Bucks has four low and four high pay symbols. The lows are various objects of Ancient Egypt, while the highs are representations of the gods Sobek, Thoth, Anubis, and Horus. A cluster of 5 matching symbols pays 0.1x to 1x the bet, while a cluster of 15+ matching symbols is worth 3x to 750x the bet. Wild symbols substitute for any other symbol, and can only appear through features.
Scara-Bucks: Slot Features
Collecting winning symbols charges a meter, which queues up modifiers that trigger when no more wins appear. Running alongside this are the Devine Blessing, Wild Scarab, and Scarab Shift modifiers.
Golden Lotus
Each winning symbol in a game round increases the Golden Lotus charge meter. A random Golden Lotus modifier is added to the queue after collecting 25 winning symbols. Up to 4 modifiers can be queued, out of Wild Wrath, Wild Surge or Wild Enchant, and these modifiers can join the queue more than once. When charging a fifth time, the Pharaoh Rush modifier is added. When no more wins occur, the Golden Lotus modifiers in the queue trigger. A game round ends when all modifiers have been used and no more wins appear. The meter resets at the start of each round. The modifiers are:
- Wild Blessing – transforms 3 to 6 random symbols in view into wilds and destroys all adjacent symbols.
- Wild Wrath – destroys all low symbols in view.
- Wild Surge – places a wild in the centre position and creates two intersecting diagonal lines through the grid. Both lines display the same random symbol, but not wilds.
- Wild Enchant – picks one random low pay and transforms all instances of it into another random regular pay symbol. If no lows are in view, it picks a random high pay.
- Pharaoh Rush – adds a 3×3 Pharaoh Wild to the grid, which moves and splits with each cascade. First into two 2×2 Pharaoh Wilds, then nine 1×1 Pharaoh Wilds. Symbols cascade down from above, filling the grid before each Pharaoh’s move.
Devine (sic) Blessing
When four instances of the same symbol are adjacent to each other in a square, they merge into a 2×2 Big symbol with an x2 multiplier, causing wins containing the Devine Blessing feature to be doubled.
Wild Scarab
At the start of each spin, a random low symbol is highlighted as a Wild Scarab. If highlighted symbols take part in a win, they leave 2 wild symbols behind before the cascade.
Scarab Shift
At random, if a spin does not produce a win, there is a possibility that a random number between 4 and 8 wild symbols are added to the reels for a chance to create a win.
Scara-Bucks: Slot Verdict
When you’ve played your share of online slots, it can be tempting sometimes to feel like you’ve seen it all. This is, admittedly, faulty thinking because slot designers continually invent new, ingenious, and surprising ways to entertain gamblers while attempting to convince them to part with a few coins. In Scara-Bucks’ case, the surprise came in how brazenly Yggdrasil Gaming has copied Play’n GO’s cluster pays hit Reactoonz. Perhaps because it was released in 2017, Yggdrasil is banking on next-gen gamblers not being aware of the original? Or maybe, they just don’t care who connects the dots? Or was Scara-Bucks made by an ex-Play’n GO member? So many questions.
Another question is, why would a gambler pick Scara-Bucks over Reactoonz? A couple of reasons why they would not include a lower RTP (96.51% vs 96%) and a lower max win of 3,100x (although Reactoonz rarely, if ever, produces such wins realistically speaking). The modifiers aren’t a deciding factor either, since they’re essentially the same. So much the same, the situation is a little bit bizarre considering Yggdrasil Gaming’s stature in the industry. The gameplay is hard to fault, as the race for the Gargantoon, oops, Pharaoh Wild, is a compulsive one, and a lengthy list of side features keeping the game moving are triggerable along the way. It worked well when Play’n GO made them all those years ago, and they work well now, albeit with uncomfortable copycat traces layered over the top.
Considering the modifiers are more or less identical, and some of the key stats are weaker, it’s almost impossible to recommend Scara-Bucks over the slot it has so obviously copied. Everything functions well enough, but it functions just as well, if not better, in Reactoonz, which also boasts better stats in a more personable game.
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