Beach Invaders

Review Beach Invaders

The beach bar setting Beach Invaders is inviting enough, and these aliens have a good taste when it comes to the places they hang out. Their favourite bar looks great, even in the magical world of online pokies. Whilst you enjoy your time at the beach together. A UFO will sometimes swoop by in the backdrop, reminding you that you’re sharing your drinks with a bunch of aliens. The game theme is colourful and fun, with the real question obviously being whether Beach Invaders is worth your real money spin or not.

How to Play

Online pokies delivered by NetEnt tend to come with great graphics whilst they remain fairly easy to understand. This is true for Beach Invaders as well which is a game that shouldn’t be very difficult to learn. Here is how to play Beach Invaders:

1. After you’re taken to the home screen, you’ll be welcomed with the message ’Let’s Party, Earthling’. This basically means you’ll need to put on your swimming togs.
2. Go for the “Play Now” button which will take you to the game’s main interface. This is also where the 5×4 reel awaits you. This online casino game makes use of 30 paylines that are divided across the different reels.
3. Make use of the bet modifier found below the reels to set your bet size. This can be done between $ 0.10 and $ 2 per game round.
4. Spin the reels and keep your fingers crossed that 3 of the same symbols land, on consecutive positions of active win lines that is.
5. Hitting the Spin button will make the player spin the Beach Invaders pokie reels once. Autoplay will make you make a number of predetermined auto-spins.
6. The Pay and Help buttons will show the paytable and the rules of the game.
7. Our recommended NZ online casinos work with account limits, which is . Do make use of these when playing online pokies. Make use of them to protect yourself. Stop with your session when you have reached your limits or when the online pokie stops being fun.

Symbol Wins

Divided between standard card symbols and tropical cocktails, Beach Invaders comes with 9 regulars and 2 special symbols. The high value symbols are the Purple, Green, Pink, and Yellow Cocktails, which are all alien-themed. Getting 3, 4, or 5 of the same symbol will make you 20, 25, 30, and 50x the bet. At the same time, the low values are recognised through the standard 10s through to As royal card signs. Combos of 5 of a kind, will pay 1.5x, 2.5x, 5x, 8x, and 10x the bet. All of the above mentioned symbols are described in the table below. Take a closer look at the payouts for 3+ of each symbol and/or their functions.

Bonus Features

NetEnt pokie games aren’t widely known for their overabundance of special features so it won’t come as a real surprise that there are only three features in Beach Invaders with one of them being the free spins feature. It’s also all about the Wild symbols in Beach Invaders, both important during the base game and the free spins round. The main characteristic of the wild is that the symbols can expand, shift, and multiply — giving players more chances of winning. Here are all the features you can expect in Beach Invaders:

Expanding Wild

If landed, wild symbols will expand covering the complete reel. This is also when the alien Wild symbol can be landed on all 5 reels. With 5 of a kind combos, you will get payouts of 50x the bet. Do note that as it always fills the reel when it lands, a 5-oak wild win will be the same as a full-screen wild win. A full screen of wilds will lead to payouts of 1,500x the bet

Locked Wild Progress Bar

The Progress Bar can be found to the left above the grid, combining 4 different milestones. Ice cubes in the colour pink are attached to random symbols which will be collected and fill the progress bar. This will also fill the bar to the brim leading to +1 guaranteed expanding wilds. The other good thing is that the wild is sticky and will remain active for 4 spins. Each of the 4 milestones will lead to a different effect on the wilds that land organically. After being filled, the progress bar resets after activating the 4-spin sticky expanding wild feature.

Free Spins

The Beach Invaders free spins can be triggered by landing 3 or more scatters, giving you a total of 10 free spins. All wilds that appear expand as usual, but they will shift one position to the left per free spin. Also, the expanded wild shrinks one position per spin, which will see them disappearing after shrinking to the minimum size of 1×1. The bonus round is also tied to the Shifting Wild Multiplier system, with the wild multiplier increasing by +1 each time the wild moves its position. The multiplier wild will also boost any win it’s part of with new wilds landing on top of the different existing multiplier wilds. New wilds will take the existing wild’s multiplier value as it expands and covers the complete reel. Only the highest multiplier value is applied if multiple wilds are part of the same win.

Payout Metrics

With a Return to Player of 96.17%, Beach Invaders is labelled as above the industry average with the other good thing being that this is the game’s only RTP. Beach Invaders has a high variance level and comes with top wins of 10,500x the stake. To get to those big wins, you will need to reach the Free Spins round and land some multipliers whilst you’re making your spins. In order to make the biggest wins, you will need to make it to the Bonus Features as the base game doesn’t offer much potential when it comes to the top wins. The hit frequency is set at 28.34% which is very favourable, we have to say.

Summary

Graphically outstanding, the Beach Invaders pokie boasts unique graphics and an easy-going vibe. The game theme is nice and makes the player dream and relax although max prizes of up to 10,500x the bet are on stake. In the base game of Beach Invaders, expanding wilds can help the player make winning combos. The locked wilds feature is a lot more thrilling though, but players will need to take into account that it can take quite some time to fill the bar so wins aren’t very frequent. This isn’t a real surprise as we’re talking about a high volatility pokie here.

The key to winning big is to manage to enter the free spins feature, and then get the most out of the shifting wilds and multipliers. Overall, we enjoyed the game but we think max wins of 10,500x the bet aren’t very realistic. In the end, the increasing multipliers can only reach 5x before they are removed from the reels. If you anyhow enjoy the game theme, then the Beach Invaders pokie is worth trying. But our overall conclusion is that it won’t make it to our list of NetEnt classics. Instead, we would recommend Kiwis to try out Fruit Shop Frenzy which was released a few days before Beach Invaders by NetEnt. This third part of the Fruit Shop series might just be the best Fruit Shop game so far.