Why pay more than 60x for a Zap Attack! buy?
For a longer start at the same rate. Thunderkick rates the three cards at 96.45%, 96.44% and 96.48%, so each returns about the same share of its price. The 60x card guarantees at least 3 Scatters and 7 free spins, the 125x card at least 4 and 11, the 250x card exactly 5 and 15: roughly 8.6x, 11.4x and 16.7x the bet per opening spin. More spins give the alien more shots at the townsfolk meters, and our one round that filled three of them began with 11.
Twenty-five lines and a saucer Wild that expands with x2 to x5
A road sign reading ROSWEALTH stands beside the reels, and the town's people fill the middle of the paytable: a sheriff, a waitress, a grandma and a farmer. The alien in a glass helmet ranks above them, paying €10.00 for five at a €1.00 bet and €1.00 for as few as two, while five sheriffs pay €5.00.
Both Wilds wear a flying saucer. The plain one can replace anything but the Scatter, a BONUS television. The one marked INVADING expands over its whole reel with a random x2, x3, x4 or x5 when the expanded reel forms part of a win. Two of them on the same line multiply each other. In our 750 paid spins, 38 base-game wins had an expanded Wild, and together those wins brought in €282.10; all base-game wins came to €430.30.
With x2 Wilds on reels 2 and 4, spin 427 gave our best base-game result: four lines that counted as four waitresses, worth €7.20 each at x4. On its fourth spin, outside the logged 750, our filming session did better, with x3 Wilds on reels 1 and 2 paying €227.70.
Ten hits turn the sheriff into an alien, then the waitress
A Bonus Game needs three or more BONUS televisions and starts with 7, 11 or 15 free spins for three, four or five. Once inside, two Scatters add 3 spins and three add 5, rising to 9 for five.
On a free spin the alien may fire its ray gun at the townsperson whose meter is open, to the right of the reels. Ten hits fill a meter, that symbol stays an alien until the round is over, and one free spin is added. Thunderkick's rules set the order: yellow sheriff, pink waitress, purple grandma, blue farmer. The server counts hits across the whole round, so meters fill at 10, 20 and 30.
Across our seven natural rounds and two control purchases the sheriff fell every time, the waitress in six of the nine, the grandma once and the farmer never. Hits per round ran from 16 to 34.
The round that went furthest started on spin 527. Four Scatters gave it 11 free spins, three meters filled for 14 spins in all, and from the spin that completed the grandma's meter to the end, three spins paid €42.50 of its €57.60. At the other end, the round of spin 585 had a retrigger on its first free spin and a sheriff turned alien, played 11 free spins and paid nothing.
60x, 125x or 250x for 7, 11 or 15 opening spins
Opening BUY FEATURE shows 3+ Scatters at €60.00 and 4+ Scatters at €125.00 on a €1.00 bet, with a third below them that our frame cuts off. The demo server prices it at 250x, and Thunderkick's rules call it 5 Scatters.
Here the demo runs the 96.15% build listed on Thunderkick's game page. A licensed site may instead carry any of the 94.14%, 92.13%, 90.15% and 87.17% builds the studio has published, and the buy menu is not offered everywhere.
| Option | Price | At €1.00 | RTP of the buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3+ Scatters | 60x | €60.00 | 96.45% |
| 4+ Scatters | 125x | €125.00 | 96.44% |
| 5 Scatters | 250x | €250.00 | 96.48% |
Only the cheaper two cards can land more Scatters than their minimum. Length matters for the meters. Our rounds averaged 2.3 hits a free spin, so at that rate the grandma's meter at 30 hits needs about 14 spins and the farmer's at 40 about 18.
For our two control purchases we chose the 60x card. Each time it landed exactly three Scatters and 7 free spins, filled the sheriff and waitress meters and finished on 9. One paid €8.40. The other paid €92.40, and an x3 Wild filling reel 3 on free spin 6 accounted for €78.00.
The purchase we filmed, again on the 60x card, went the same way for longer. A retrigger stretched it to 12 free spins, the sheriff and the waitress both turned, and all of its €54.50 arrived on free spins 9 and 11, after the second meter had filled. The grandma's meter was still short when the spins ran out.
Other games here sell free spins by Scatter count too, on different curves. Midas Golden Touch 3 asks 100x, 150x and 250x, its buy RTP edging up from 94.30% to 94.39%, and Pink Elephants Trinity asks 150x, 300x and 600x while its figure falls from 95.10% to 94.10%. Here the three cards sit within 0.04 points of one another.
In 750 paid spins the alien raided seven times
Our session at €1.00 a spin cost €750.00 and paid out €618.50, a return of 82.5% where Thunderkick lists 96.15%.
- 750paid spins at €1.00 in the demo
- 82.5%of the stakes paid back
- 73.5xbest round, free spins included
- 7free spins rounds triggered
Seven Bonus Games started naturally, on spins 158, 422, 494, 527, 585, 645 and 743, six of them from three Scatters. Their free spins paid €188.20 and the base game the other €430.30. The best round, 73.5x from spin 494, had an expanded Wild on reel 3 in two of its first three free spins: x2 for €16.80, then x3 for €44.70.
The balance sank to €4,765.20 by spin 421, and the Bonus Game that began on the following spin added €18.70. Half of all wins were 1.2x or smaller, and the worst losing streak lasted 20 spins.
The cheapest card is enough to watch the sheriff turn
AboutSlots and SlotCatalog compare the game to Pink Elephants, and no source makes the two relatives. Pink Elephants 2 on this site is a 6x4 game of 4,096 connecting pay ways whose four buy levels run from 60x to 250x, the buy RTP climbing from 96.33% to 96.60%.
With the three rates level, the 60x card is the one we would test first. It reached the waitress in all three of our purchases, and the 125x card's 11 spins match the start of the only round that reached the grandma.
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Some answers below are printed in the game's help; the others come from the server's log of our spins.
In what order does the alien shoot the townsfolk?
Sheriff, waitress, grandma, farmer, by Thunderkick's rules. One listing puts the grandma before the waitress, but our logs back the rules: in all nine of our bonus rounds the sheriff's meter filled first, and whenever a second meter filled, it was the waitress's.
Does a full meter turn every symbol into an alien?
No. Only the townsperson whose meter filled changes. Once the sheriff meter was full in our rounds, the sheriff stopped appearing and an extra alien took its place, while the waitress, grandma and farmer kept turning up as themselves until their own meters filled.
Can the Expanding Multiplier Wild show x4?
The rules list x2, x3, x4 and x5, yet none of the 61 expansions in our logs showed x4. We counted x2 41 times, x3 16 times and x5 4 times across the paid spins, the bonus rounds and the purchases. A sample that size cannot say how rare x4 is.
What happens when two Expanding Multiplier Wilds share a line?
Their multipliers multiply, so x2 and x3 make x6, and Thunderkick's rules document puts the ceiling at x125. Our highest was x10 on spin 704, an x5 on reel 2 with an x2 on reel 4, yet the line counted as four card symbols and paid €6.00.
What hit rate does Zap Attack! have?
Thunderkick's information sheet gives no hit frequency, so the 17.97% printed by one listing has no studio source we could find. In our 750 paid spins 19.5% paid something, and 15 of those wins reached 10x.