Developer Play’n GO has added another famous band to their roster of branded rock slot machines. This time it’s Def Leppard, an English band that first appeared in 1977 and hasn’t slowed down since. The Def Leppard Hysteria slot highlights the band’s best-selling album to date, which was originally published in 1987. Over 20 million copies of Hysteria have been sold throughout the world. The album has no fewer than seven smash songs.
Def Leppard Hysteria is among the most prominent acts Play’n GO has collaborated with, and the studio has adopted a cluster paying grid slot aesthetic for the release. They’ve gone all out 80s, and the game takes place on a stage with smoke and bright lighting, like some of the previous rock slots in the series. Unfortunately for the audience, the absence of band members makes the stage appear empty. If you’d rather close your eyes and imagine yourself at a concert, you may always imagine that the band is preparing to enter the stage or is waiting for some applause before doing an encore. Some of Def Leppard’s biggest singles will find their way into your ear canal, adding fuel to the fire of your imagination.
When the player presses the start button, 35 symbols are dropped onto a 5-by-7-cell playing grid. On it, clusters of 5 or more similar symbols in any direction are considered a victory. The underlying mathematical model is quite risky (ranked 6 out of 10), with a default RTP value of 96.27% (though this can vary). Both desktop computers and mobile devices may host the show, and bets can range from 10 percent to 100 pounds or euros.
Expect some generic symbols that are only tangentially linked to the band if you were looking for symbols featuring them. Low payouts range from 0.1x to 0.3x for clusters of five symbols, increasing to 20x to 40x for clusters of 15 or more symbols. Then there are the four more personal premium symbols, which pay anything from 0.2-2 times the stake for a cluster of 5 symbols to 80-1,000x for a cluster of 15 or more symbols. No matter how they enter the fray, wilds can stand in for other paying icons.
Slot Features Inspired by Def Leppard Hysteria
Def Leppard Hysteria’s features, such as the Break It Up, Fire Me Up, and Pour Some Sugar On Me Free Spins, all rely heavily on wild symbols, which brings us to our next topic. Cascades and Sugar Me Sweet are the two optional bonuses.
Cascades
Cascade mechanisms are frequently found in conjunction with grid slots. This function eliminates clusters automatically as they occur. When new clusters form, the process begins again as symbols trickle down to fill the voids.
Split Apart
On losing spins, the symbols shuffle around and anywhere from three and six wilds are added to the board at random.
Activate Me
Each spin will have a different combination of pay symbols. A meter is charged whenever a win has this particular symbol. Wild symbols are added to the grid in increments of three to six when the meter is full and no more cascading wins can be achieved. Once the additional wilds have been activated, the charge meter empties, but it may be replenished. The meter must be filled with a total of four selected symbol victories.
Give Me Some Sugar and I’ll Spin for Free
A letter is triggered when a victory happens at the selected position. Free games are awarded for spelling SUGAR using only the active letters. The charge meter works the same way during free spins as it does in the main game, except now it triggers falling multiplier wilds. Each cascade causes these wilds to descend one level, obliterating everything in their path. Its multiplier grows by 1 at each stage, up to a maximum of 7x. If a cluster contains several multiplier wilds, the highest multiplier value will be utilized.
Sugar, I Love You
During free spins, if a win doesn’t occur, 6-9 symbols will be replaced with the ones in the charge meter.
Hysteria Over Def Leppard’s Slot Win
While the slot has some good music and graphics, we wouldn’t say Play’n GO is a great Def Leppard fan. The reason for this is because Def Leppard Hysteria doesn’t exactly scream “Def Leppard” if the music is turned off. Without the band members, the game feels flat and uninteresting. I’m sure there was a valid reason for this. In contrast, games like Kiss Reels of Rock give you the sensation of a wild party with the band. Of course, Def Leppard’s biggest singles are included prominently in Def Leppard Hysteria. Still, the images are so unremarkable that you could probably play any slot machine while blasting the Hysteria cassette and get the same impression.
The features are decent but lack significant personality, much like the rest of Def Leppard Hysteria. Collecting symbols to activate modifiers can be exciting when you’re on a winning streak, but again, you don’t get the impression that Play’n GO spared any expense in paying tribute to their heroes. Perhaps we’re making too much of a fuss over insignificant issues. The sound effects and bonus elements are there, and payouts of up to 10,000 times the wager are possible. Def Leppard’s Hysteria could have blown the doors off and propelled them into rock lore with a little extra effort.
Overall, Def Leppard’s Hysteria is a serviceable addition to the rock canon, though it could have rocked more effectively. It’s tough to find any flaws in the game’s mechanics or statistics, although some additional Def Leppard content would have been welcome. The relatively generic graphics look like Play’n GO grabbed a folder of premade games, threw in some Def Leppard tracks, and threw in a few token sprites before calling it a day.