Deadcode

Deadcode: Slot Overview

At the time of writing, AI was one of the major buzzwords, where two popular endgames for humanity were a utopia where we lived lives of leisure while 1s and 0s did the heavy lifting or a digital dystopia where a handful of corporate overlords controlled everything while the rest of us were pushed aside as worthless biomatter. For now, we sit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, pondering outcomes, as software provider ELK Studios has done in its bleak vision of a possible future in the online slot Deadcode.

Deadcode's back story is dark, yet plausible. It is set in an era where 'Five mega-corporations control digital life, using stolen data to power bots that manipulate, and replace human behaviour.' Fortunately, not all of humanity has just lain down to take the digital humiliation. A group of freedom hackers called Null have set about erasing identities to help people escape. This no doubt leads to bouts of hacking, breaching, and fighting it out in a war of organics vs code. Deadcode is a futuristic slot of skyscrapered city in the base game and humanoids as batteries, Matrix style in the bonus round, pulsing at all times to an electronic beat.

The gaming grid is expandable, and has a default 5x5 size. Wins occur when landing clusters of 3 or more matching pay symbols connected in horizontal or vertical lines. Winning symbols get deleted from existence, creating wilds and causing symbols to avalanche down to refill empty spaces. Avalanching wins repeat so long as new winning combinations hit. Players may input $/€0.20 to $/€100 into the Deadcode machine, which is highly volatile and has an RTP of 96%-87% depending on the market.

Deadcode's pay symbols are six Asian style character symbols, which pay 0.5x to 5x the bet for a 5-of-a-kind winning combination. When a winning cluster of exactly 3 symbols hits, it creates a wild in the middle of the cluster, which substitutes all paying symbols.

Deadcode: Slot Features

The features in Deadcode are a global multiplier, a selection of Subroutine features, Breach, bonus and super bonus games, as well as X-iter buys.

Global Multiplier

All wins are multiplied by the global multiplier. Each winning cascade increases the global multiplier's value by +1.

Activating Subroutines

The grid has one Collector per reel, each linked to a Subroutine feature. Collectors are filled by collecting symbols matching their type. It takes 3 symbols for the first filled Collector, then 5, 7, and 10 for each further filled Collector in the round. Pending Subroutine features trigger when there are no more wins on a full grid, from left to right.

• Mystery X: Transforms pay symbols into one payout symbol type in a diagonal X pattern.
• Terminate: Removes 1 to 3 pay symbol types from the grid, increasing the global multiplier.
• Upgrade: Selects a pay symbol type and upgrades all occurrences into a higher value type.
• Refactor: Transforms 3-5 non-winning, non-feature symbol positions into feature symbols such as wild, scatter, or super scatter.
• Refresh: Expands the grid by 1 row and removes pay symbols. If the grid is 7 rows high, it just clears symbols.

Breach

When a round ends with no more wins, the Breach feature may trigger. All non-winning pay symbols are replaced by new symbols. Winning symbols and feature symbols are sticky. If new or improved wins appear, the Breach continues until no new wins occur.

Bonus Game & Super Bonus Game

Hitting 3 scatters triggers 7 free spins. During the bonus game, grid expansion, global multiplier and Collector meters are persistent between spins. If at least one of the triggering scatters is a super scatter, 7 super free spins are awarded. In this round, the 7 free spins are guaranteed to have 1-5 Subroutine collectors loaded. During bonus and super bonus rounds, collecting a scatter awards +1 spin and transforms into a wild.

X-iter

From the X-iter, gamblers can activate Bonus Hunt for 2.5x to make triggering free spins 4 times more likely or Mega Bonus Hunt for 5x to make it 8 times more likely. Subroutine Overload at 10x guarantees 1-5 Subroutine features, while the bonus or super bonus can be bought for 100x or 250x the bet, respectively.

Deadcode: Slot Verdict

Isn't it interesting that when people make long-term predictions about the future, they are so often negative? Digital domination of the masses, nuclear holocaust, famines, war, environmental catastrophe, a slow and steady slide into animalistic degeneracy, it's hard to think of a long-term prediction with a happy ending. Nevertheless, we soldier on, going to work, loving our family and friends, and for the most part getting on with our neighbours. Suffering clearly sells, and Deadcode's vision of the future can hardly be called a cheerful one. Even the title is ominous, as if in the not-too-distant future, all us non-trillionaires will end up as dead code, useless parts of a program that never run or don't change anything.

And on that positive note, let's turn to Deadcode the game, thought-provoking on one level, entertaining as a slot on another, in a manner reminiscent of Moon Princess, though one which forks in different directions. For example, Deadcode can get on snowballing runs where winning combinations create wins, avalanching into other wins and on it goes. Instead of trying to clear the grid or anything like that, players will be wanting to fill Collectors to trigger Subroutine features to keep the ball rolling. Actually, even that is similar to filling the power meter to trigger the Princess Trinity feature, but anyway. Further momentum is provided by the persistence in free spins in a game which wants to keep moving, and moving, at all costs.

On a technical side, Deadcode's math might be unforgiving, though it is nice to see ELK Studios touch back on the higher RTP configurations, and winning potential of 5,000x the bet is fine if not dazzling. ELK Studios has nailed the future dominated by code aesthetic, and overall, there is an intriguing game here made in the Moon Princess mould for players who like to pretend they're cyberpunks while having a gamble.