HOW TO PLAY TWISTED LAB
The base game starts off relatively tame. It’s played on a square-shaped board with 5 reels and 5 rows. The layout is not exactly typical, but it’s also not overly experimental. There are 19 active paylines along which you need to hit matching symbols.
Hit 3 or more of the same kind, and you get a payout based on the number and value of the winning symbols. Standard stuff which any fan of online slot games will easily come to grips with.
RotoGrid™,
Twisted Lab’s standout feature is its ability to twist and rotate the board. Hacksaw dubbed the feature RotoGrid™, and it’s tied to a yellow symbol with twisty arrows.
Any time a RotoGrid™ symbol appears anywhere on the board, the whole game board rotates 90 degrees clockwise. Basically, reels become rows and rows become reels. If you’re lucky, this can produce fresh winning lines, allowing you to win even more on a single game round. In some ways, the effect is similar to Tumbling Symbols.
Moreover, each symbol can have up to 4 charges. If you have multiple charges lined up, the board will rotate multiple times, potentially resulting in several chained wins. If more than one RotoGrid™ symbol hits in one spin, their charges are added together for even more rotations. You can see the number of remaining charges in the current round on the right side of the screen.
Oozing Beakers
This mechanic is tied to another type of special symbol called the Oozing Beaker. It looks like a bright lab beaker, so you can’t miss it.
Every time the grid rotates, any Ooozing Beakers break and spill towards the bottom of the reels. Any symbols it covers in Ooze become Wilds, which is a nice additional bonus to the already exciting RotoGrid.
Oozing Beakers can also have multipliers attached to them. Blue beakers can show multipliers ranging from 2x to 100x, while the pink beakers are limited to 2-10x. Purple beakers never have multipliers.
Any symbols turned into Wilds by Beakers with multipliers will increase the reward of any winning lines they’re a part of. Additionally, multiple Oozes can stack on top of each other, in which case any relevant multipliers are summed up and applied.
Different combinations of different colours can also result in other effects. For example, combining Blue and Pink ooze applies the combined multiplier to all positions affected by either ooze.
Twisted Lab Free Spins
Landing three Free Spin scatters anywhere on the table awards the player 10 free spins. These mostly work like the base game, but RotoGrid™ symbols have a significantly higher chance of appearing. We don’t say ‘significantly’ lightly – free spin rounds in this game quickly turn into rotating, oozing insanity.
Twist of the Twisted
If you hit 4 Scatters at the same time, you’re instead treated to a bonus round that works a bit like Hold the Jackpot.
Basically, all regular symbols are removed from the game, leaving only specials such as RotoGrid. Regular symbols are replaced by either non-paying purple icons or special new symbols called Twisters.
Twisters are sticky symbols that stay around until the end of the bonus round. Each Twister has 4 sides with different multiplier values – some are higher, some lower. Every time the grid rotates during this bonus round, the Twister symbols also rotate. Whichever multiplier finds itself at the top when the bonus round ends is your reward from that symbol. All top-facing multipliers are added together as one big payout.
The bonus round ends whenever you spin the reels three times in a row and only receive non-paying symbols.
Additionally, Collector symbols can also appear during this feature. These green boxes collect all top-side multipliers currently on the board and remove their Twister symbols, leaving more room for additional wins.
