Foxium, a Microgaming partner, is back with a sequel slot called The Great Albini 2, and they’re ready to do some magic for you. Foxium has significantly updated the design, functionality, and statistics this time around. Some of the enhancements are worthwhile, while others are illusory at best. Get your tickets now and join me in seeing Albini’s return to the stage.
A look outside first. Foxium’s ability to make you feel like a member of the crowd was likely a major selling point for fans of the original game. Albini floated off to one side, and his helper Lily sometimes made cameo appearances while the reels were set up on a tiny stage with heavy drapery. Because of the way the story is told, all of it is virtually absent from The Great Albini 2. Foxium appears to have adopted the mobile-friendly technique made popular by studio PG Soft, thus desktop gamers will notice a hazy stage in the background of a compressed play area in the middle of the screen. Despite an incredibly fantastic music, the results are less immersive than the first installment, giving the impression more of a recorded performance than a real one.
The Great Albini 2 may be found in a variety of mathematical guises, with return to player percentages (RTPs) ranging from 96.1% to 92.1%. All spins on the 5×4 40-payline video slot have a return to player percentage of 27.19%. The game may be played on any device, and wagers range from 20 pence to £/€12. The Booster ante bet function allows players to boost the cost every spin by 50% in order to gain access to more Money Gems and Collect symbols. Albini Multipliers and Lily Extra Spins are more likely to appear during the bonus round.
When three or more identical symbols appear anywhere along the game’s 40 fixed paylines, which begin at the first reel, the player is awarded a prize. A line of five 10-A low pays returns 0.67 to 1.33x the bet, whereas a line of five high pay Lucky Cups, Knives, Lilies, or Alibins returns 2 to 6.67x the stake. To aid in this process, wild symbols can appear on any reel to replace standard pay icons. When five Wilds appear in a row, you can win up to 16.67 times your wager.
Review of The Great Albini 2’s Slot Functions
The original elements have been removed and replaced by a cash symbol collecting mechanism and a hold & win type bonus game, both of which were developed by Foxium.
Features to Collect
Money Gems can appear in one of three colors, each of which corresponds to a particular set of values. In the fundamental game, blue gems pay 1-9x the wager, purple gems pay 10-20x, and red gems pay 25-50x the wager. If a collect sign appears on the very last reel, you win the sum of all the values represented by the Money Gem symbols on the screen. There is a chance that any collect symbols you find will have a multiplier between 2 and 5. The sum of all Money Gems is multiplied by this factor.
Added Value
The bonus round is activated when three Scatter symbols appear anywhere on reels 2, 3, or 4. In this new bonus round, players receive 3 spins with the restriction that only Money Gems, Albini Multiplier symbols, and Lily Extra Spins symbols can appear. When they do touch down, the remaining spin count is reset to one. At the conclusion of play, the win multiplier is applied to the sum total of the Money Gems.
Every time an Albini Multiplier symbol appears, it boosts the winnings multiplier by 1. These icons can increase the multiplier by a factor of 1.5x, 2.5x, or 3x. The current spin count is increased by one when Lily symbols appear.
Slot Verdict II: The Great Albini
Albini 2 had a hard time recovering from the negative tone established by the initially constrained playing area. Albini 2 was more like gazing through a peephole at a movie than it was like going to the theater and paying to see it. The music, as has been noted, is very enchanting, but the remainder of the game lacks the charisma of its predecessor. Fair enough, this might be a plus for certain players while disappointing others, since it makes The Great Albini 2 less of a show and more of a gambling instrument. Who knows if this was done on purpose to simplify the process or because there just wasn’t enough area when considering only mobile devices.
The gameplay seemed well-balanced, with a mix of cash symbol collecting and streak respins in both the regular game and the bonus game. The latter was exceptionally hard to come by during testing, as were the opportunities to initiate extra rounds. The fact that we won a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents the first time the bonus game kicked in didn’t help matters. You never know what will happen in a game. After straining our eyes for so long to try to make sense of what was happening, the zero win was almost enough to have us leave the theater in disgust.
Filling the grid with symbols in the bonus game of The Great Albini 2 awards the maximum payout of 20,000 times the wager. A lot of money, to be sure, but it appears to taper off precipitously once the first reward is awarded; knowing what the likely winnings would be would be helpful.
The Great Albini 2 is entertaining enough to look at for a while, and it does have an aura of mystery and magic about it, but the tricks it features aren’t exactly cutting edge, and playing it on any platform other than a mobile device feels a little unnecessary. If you let a magician borrow your pocket watch for a trick, put it in a black velvet bag, and then hit it with a hammer, that’s how The Great Albini 2 will make you feel. Something went wrong, though, and instead of a completely operational watch, he delivers you a bag of shards.