Turn Trash Into Treasure in Tinkerbot from ELK Studios

ELK Studios always had a knack for interesting themes. The trend continues with Tinkerbot, as the studio transports us into the future, only to dump us at the scrap yard.

However, in a world where robots hold the reins, even that kind of place has interesting things to see and an occasional diamond hidden beneath the rusting metal. Should you try your luck with Tinkerbot? We go over this release with a fine-tooth comb to see if it is worth your time.

Tinkerbot Visuals & Sounds

We can’t say we ever expected mountains of junk to look appealing, but ELK Studios’ art team defies expectations. The game is set in the evening, allowing the lights to focus on background elements closer to us while a purplish hue obscures faraway heaps of trash.

Available symbols consist of pieces of scrap metal and various robot parts like rockets, fuel tanks, and engines. It perfectly feeds into the setting, ensuring you’re immersed in the experience. Wilds and Scatters are represented with letters W and B, stylised with gears and bolts. Finally, yellow and red Botboxes can reveal various features.

We love the upbeat track playing in the background as you spin the reels. It really helps to sell the feel of this being a fun place to explore and that Tinkerbot loves his job. It’s accompanied by plenty of cool side effects like the sound of metal hitting the floor as symbols drop or lasers zapping them away as part of the cluster pays system.

Hats off to ELK Studios for going above and beyond to make this game sound right.

Tinkerbot Gameplay & Features

You play Tinkerbot on a 5×5 grid with cluster wins taking the place of paylines. Get five or more symbols horizontally or vertically adjacent to each other to generate a win. The game also employs a cascading reel feature, which adds Botboxes in places where payouts occurred.

Botboxes

There are two types of Botboxes: yellow and red. With yellow Botboxes, you must have at least three on the reels simultaneously to make them activate a feature. Meanwhile, the red Botbox immediately starts a bonus. Botboxes can award the following features:

• Absorb – one paying symbol from the grid is randomly selected. All instances of that icon are collected, creating a multisymbol in that spot.
• Transform – the game randomly picks a paying icon and transforms it and all other identical symbols on the grid into another icon.
• Wilds – they can substitute for all paying symbols. They can also appear as Hot Wilds, which release a random number of Wilds to other positions.
• Multipliers – the multiplier adds its value to the total multiplier, increasing all subsequent payouts, and then turns into a Wild.
• Grid expansion – each time this symbol appears, the playing area is increased by one row and one column, up to a 7×7 configuration.

Multisymbol

Multisymbols can appear during normal gameplay or as part of a feature. They look identical to their standard counterparts, except for a number at the bottom that tells players how many icons are stacked in one spot. They all but guarantee a win when they appear.

Bonus Round

Collect three bonus symbols to activate the Free Drops feature. You get 7 free spins, during which all unused Botboxes remain on the reels. The grid size and multiplier also persist between spins.

The Super Free Drops trigger if four bonus icons land on the grid. You receive 9 free spins instead of 7, which are played at a maximum grid size.

X-iter

The last bonus we want to discuss is the X-iter feature, which lets you improve your chances of triggering other bonuses. Alternatively, you can buy them outright. The more lucrative a feature is, the higher its cost is.

Tinkerbot RTP and Payouts

Tinkerbot is a medium variance game with a thrilling top prize of 10,000x. Its RTP is 94%, which is a bit on the low side compared to the video slots we usually look at. It’s not so bad that it would spoil the fun, but there’s room for improvement.