AvatarUX has zapped the competition away with its latest symbol-splitting slot release, LooneyPop, which introduced a brand new mechanic to claim our Slot of the Week award. 

As a 5×3 reel slot that has up to 118,098 ways to win, LooneyPop combines AvatarUX’s well-known PopWins mechanic with ZapReel, a top horizontal reel that places an abundance of features on the reels below. 

The slot uses high volatility with an RTP of 96 per cent while offering a maximum win of up to x50,000 the player’s stake. 

Nicola Longmuir, CEO of AvatarUX, stated: “LooneyPop introduces a fun cartoon theme with colourful characters and a brand new immersive mechanic – ZapReel, offering a truly unique gaming experience. We strive to combine bold,engaging mechanics and themes in all our titles, and this is evident once again with LooneyPop.”

The PopWins mechanic sees symbols in a winning combination pop to be replaced by two new symbols, increasing the size of the reels that the win occurs in with a maximum reel size of 5×6. 

In LooneyPop, achieving enough wins to make all reels expand to six symbols high will trigger the free spins feature. In this bonus game mode, the free spins begin on a 5×6 reel set with the ability to reach up to nine symbols high when more PopWins are formed. 

Between each spin in the free spins game mode, the reel set will not reconfigure to a 5×6 size but instead will reset down to the shortest reel height available. 

Before playing out the free spins, players can increase the number of free spins awarded by spinning a gamble wheel and landing the wheel marker in a winning zone. The starting amount of free spins is six, but players can use the gamble to gain an additional three spins.

This gamble can then be repeated, allowing for a maximum of 12 free spins. However, the gamble wheel can land in a special golden field that awards 12 free spins with another chance to gamble again to receive 18 free spins. 

Spinning the gamble wheel and landing in a losing zone will cause the player to return to the base game empty-handed. 

Throughout the base game, the ZapReel mechanic places an additional horizontal top reel above the middle three reels. 

On each spin, this ZapReel will display special features to enhance each base game spin, including x2 and x3 multipliers, synced reel symbols causing two reels to have identical symbols and expanding winning symbols that cover entire reels with any symbols that contribute to a win on that reel. 

Another feature offered by this ZapReel is a split symbol bonus, which results in up to five of the same symbols appearing in the same cell. 

These ZapReel features are enhanced in the free spins game mode, with up to x10 multipliers, 10 split symbols and three synced reels on offer. 

If readers would like to try out LooneyPop for themselves, they can click here to be taken to AvatarUX’s official website.