Spielo’s Plants vs. Zombies and Aruze’s Knight of La Mancha

By John Grochowski on Wednesday November 28, 2012

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Inspiration for new slot machine themes can come from anywhere. We’ve seen slots based on board games, movies, TV shows, rock bands—if it resonates with the public, it’s fair game. At the Global Gaming Expo, Spielo International introduced a line of slots based on popular online free-play games, while Aruze Gaming turned to classic literature.

Plants vs. Zombies comes to Spielo from the casual games world under its new license with PopCap games. Some of the most popular online free-play games come from PopCap, including the megahit Zuma and Bejeweled. I tried my hand at Plants vs. Zombies, which has a three-level progressive jackpot, and a bonus event that lines up plants at one end of the graveyard, and zombies at the other. Can the zombies make it past the plants? It depends on which defenses come up randomly for the given round. I knew I had the big bonus made when my last zombie had only a defenseless daisy to stomp.

Zuma and Bejeweled both offer skill-based bonuses, though you can choose to have the machine play your bonus event randomly instead. The original Zuma free game is skill-heavy, and that’s incorporated in to Spielo’s version in a bonus battle in which you can either be the frog and take direct action, or watch the frog and let the game take over.

Similarly, Bejeweled has three skill bonuses and three corresponding chance bonuses. Do you want to make your own choices to clear gem combinations, or let automated selection do the trick?

And speaking of fun on slots, I laughed out loud during Aruze Gaming’s Knight of La Mancha. Don Quixote went tilting at windmills … and the windmill crumpled to the ground, stones, mortar and all. Sancho Panza jumped in triumph. Is the windmill supposed to lose?