Ugga Bugga Slot – Free Demo

One row spins, then nine

Ugga Bugga spins a single row, hands you three Hold buttons, and then copies whatever you keep onto ten rows at once. I am an admirer of the vintage Playtech library. Desert Treasure and Beach Life, the other survivors from that stretch of the catalogue, are conventional five-reel line games with no hold buttons and no mirroring, where this one is three reels across ten rows. I wanted to see what the hold buttons were all about. I played 267 spins at a 10.00 stake to find out.

In Playtech's game, there is a slot constructed around a single mechanic and with limited potential, and it doesn't obey the framework of most contemporary releases at all, since the entire return rests in the base game. The Multi-Spin Feature is the only mechanic sitting on top of the paylines, and it never switches off. On the downside of things, it does seem rather sparse next to anything issued since. Wins are paid against the line bet rather than the total bet. It's possible, though, that the uncommonly generous mathematical model was intended to compensate for that. For example, most slots reserve a portion of the RTP for a bonus round. Ugga Bugga also has no scatter and no jackpot. This game has no bonus round at all, so the RTP is allocated differently. In my run, 129 of 267 spins paid something, and 90 of those paid less than the 10.00 stake.

Ugga Bugga is a 3-reel, 10-row slot. Only the bottom-left row is live when a round starts; the other nine sit inactive until the first spin has stopped. It has 10 fixed paylines, one per row, and it arrives with a theoretical RTP value of 99.07% at maximum coins, 98.74% at minimum. Wins landing on more than one payline are added together.

The totem, the grey mask and the coins amount

Something I'm not an admirer of is paytables shown in coin value. Every figure in the table is a multiplier of the line bet rather than of the total bet. It makes no sense and is baffling to players, though it's an old custom in the world of slots, and doesn't seem like it will ever be discarded. The Win field reports what each reel has paid as the rows stop. For reference, the line bet here is the coins value multiplied by the coins amount, 1 to 5. At the 10.00 total stake I played, the line bet was 1.00. The total bet is 10 times the line bet.

Ugga Bugga's most rewarding symbol is the totem wild, which substitutes for any symbol. It stands in for whatever makes the best combination available on the line. It grants you 1,000 times the line bet for 3 across an active payline at maximum coins, falling to 250 times the line bet if you play 1 to 4 coins. Two wilds on a line pay 2 times the line bet and a single wild pays 1 times the line bet. The best of the standard symbols is the grey mask at 125 times the line bet. Below it sit the red mask at 100 times the line bet and the orange mask at 75.

Three Hold buttons and a second press of Spin

Unlike most slots, this one arrives with no bonus features and no free spins whatsoever. The hold buttons are the only input beyond Spin. It arrives with only a base game mechanic named the Multi-Spin Feature, which is always active. Pressing a Hold button a second time releases the symbol again. You spin the bottom-left row and hold up to 3 symbols, then spin again. On one spin the bottom-left row stopped with two yellow huts and a third symbol I left alone; holding the pair lit their Hold buttons and mirrored both huts up all ten rows, with Line Bet 1.00, Bet 10.00, Win 0.00 and a balance of 990.00. The held symbols appear on all 10 rows, and the rows stop one by one. They run from the bottom-left row to the top-right, and the second press spins away every symbol you did not hold.

Minty’s Final Note: My 267 spins came back at 62.6%, and there was no feature anywhere in that stretch to hang it on, because the ten mirrored rows and the three Hold buttons are the entire game; the best spin in the run paid 210.00 against a 10.00 stake.

267 spins with nothing to wait for

I can't help to sense that Ugga Bugga is showing its age, the stripped-back visual presentation aside. There is no feature to wait for, so a round resolves in two presses of Spin. It does very little that any slot issued since doesn't do better. My longest run without a win was 7 spins, ending on spin 96.

My own session was nowhere near the theoretical RTP. The balance peaked at 1,005.00 on spin 5 and never got back above the 1,000.00 I started with. 267 spins at a 10-credit stake returned 1,672.00 credits of the 2,670.00 wagered, a 62.6% return, with the best spin paying 210.00.