18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The exterminator had become the entire fourth reel.
Five rows.
Gas mask.
Blue electrical glow.
A multiplier large enough to suggest that ordinary pest control had ended several decisions ago.
He had landed near the middle as a Wild.
Then the reel electrified.
He climbed upward.
Reached the top.
And instead of considering that sufficient, expanded back down until there was nowhere left on the column that did not contain the same armed man in breathing equipment.
Clouds drifted outside the brass windows.
A zeppelin floated past in the distance.
A green gremlin was still standing on reel two.
The airship had deployed a full-height electrically enhanced exterminator.
The pest remained.
That told me quite a lot about the problem.
I had started with €200 and €1 per spin.
Cloudforge looked like somebody had built a pest-control laboratory inside an airship and then discovered, halfway through construction, that the pests had already moved in.
The reels were full of equipment.
Ray guns.
Chemical cylinders.
Stopwatches.
Round metal devices that looked capable of either measuring pressure or ending a neighbourhood.
Then there was the gremlin.
Purple hat.
Green face.
Pink goggles.
Expression of somebody who had seen all the machinery and correctly concluded that none of it had worked yet.
I left the Enhanced Bet alone.
No Bonus Reels.
No guaranteed Wild spins.
No purchase.
The airship already contained cannons pointed inward.
It could demonstrate the standard safety procedure first.
The first few spins mostly produced metal.
A few red spheres.
A timer.
Three green devices connected for €2.
Later, ray guns brought €4.
The gremlin appeared several times without contributing much beyond confidence.
Then the first exterminator landed.
Bottom half of reel three.
Blue mask.
Armour.
Gun.
2x.
He did not stay that size.
The symbol stretched upward one position.
3x.
Again.
4x.
Again.
By the time he reached the top of the reel, there was considerably more exterminator than had originally landed.
A line connected through him.
€8.
The airship had discovered vertical staffing.
I continued at €1.
For several spins, nothing comparable happened.
Gremlin.
Bomb.
Timer.
Canister.
A few small pays.
One spin put two gremlins on screen beside three different weapons.
No winning line.
The weapons had surrounded the correct target and achieved nothing.
Another Wild arrived later on reel five.
It expanded two positions and helped a ray-gun line pay €5.
Useful.
Still reasonably proportional.
Then two Wilds landed on the same reel.
One higher.
One lower.
The upper exterminator began moving first.
Up he went.
His multiplier increased.
Then the lower one started following.
Two identical gas-masked men were now expanding through the same vertical space from different starting points.
They met.
The numbers multiplied.
The reel flashed.
The resulting win reached €14.40.
The gremlin appeared on the next spin.
Same goggles.
No visible concern.
At that point the airship had demonstrated duplication, vertical expansion and multiplication of armed exterminators.
The gremlin had demonstrated attendance.
The balance drifted down anyway.
€191.
€186.40.
A small €6.20 win slowed it.
Then several blank spins resumed the descent.
I stayed on €1.
The machinery remained beautiful.
Brass frame.
Glass canopy.
Clouds outside.
A massive cannon visible through one side.
This was not a workshop interested in subtle repairs.
At €181.20, two Scatter symbols landed.
One on the left.
One on the right.
The middle did not cooperate.
No feature.
Two spins later, another Scatter appeared alone.
Then nothing.
By spin thirty-four, my balance showed €178.20.
I pressed again.
Scatter.
Second Scatter.
Then a different one.
SUPER SCATTER.
The reels stopped.
Two ordinary masks of impending doom and one upgraded mask of considerably more doom sat across the airship.
ERADICATION SPINS.
Eight.
The name seemed ambitious.
The gremlin population visible on screen had usually been one.
Apparently eight rounds were required.
The first feature spin selected an electric reel.
Blue current ran through the column.
A Wild landed elsewhere.
3x.
He contributed to the multiplier sitting beside the reels.
A small combination crossed the middle.
The new global number applied to it.
€8.40.
Next spin.
Another reel became electric.
No Wild.
A few symbols connected anyway.
The global multiplier stayed where it was and pushed the win higher than the same line had any right to be.
Third spin.
Wild.
2x.
The global multiplier grew.
Another Wild landed on the electric reel.
He appeared in the middle at 3x.
Then started climbing.
4x.
5x.
Reached the top.
The electricity did not release him.
The Wild expanded downward.
One position.
Another.
Another.
The whole reel filled.
The finished multiplier doubled.
This was the moment the exterminator became the entire fourth reel.
The gremlin remained elsewhere on the grid.
It was difficult not to respect the commitment.
Not the exterminator’s.
The gremlin’s.
The resulting line wins passed through the full Wild column and the global multiplier.
€18.
The feature had five spins left.
Another electric reel lit.
Nothing useful landed on it.
The next spin delivered two Wilds on separate reels, both adding to the global multiplier.
The number beside the reels grew again.
A ray-gun combination crossed one of them.
€7.80.
Then came the ugly piece of engineering.
Reel three electrified.
One Wild landed high.
Another lower down.
Both on the same column.
The upper one expanded first.
The lower followed.
Their values climbed as they moved.
They reached the same territory.
The multipliers collided.
The electric reel flashed harder.
Then the completed Wild structure continued through the column until reel three was almost nothing but glowing exterminator.
The win lines crossed it.
The global multiplier applied after that.
The amount climbed to €27.20.
The airship had now used multiplication inside a reel and another multiplier outside the reel to improve the effectiveness of a man whose original job appeared to be shooting one small green creature.
Two spins remained.
Scatter.
Scatter.
I watched the empty spaces.
Three would have added more spins.
The third did not arrive.
Instead I got a timer, a bomb and the gremlin.
Of course.
The feature responsible for eradication had reached the point where the gremlin itself was helping prevent overtime.
Final spin.
One electric reel.
A Wild landed on it low.
The blue current caught him.
He expanded all the way upward and then filled back down.
Another line formed through the completed column.
The global multiplier had grown enough by then to turn it into the last useful hit.
€20.20.
The eight spins ended.
€81.60.
My balance moved to €259.80.
The normal airship returned.
The electricity vanished.
The reels went back to individual symbols.
Ray gun.
Timer.
Metal sphere.
Chemical cylinder.
And there, almost immediately, the green gremlin appeared again.
Pink goggles.
Purple hat.
Still present.
I had watched armed exterminators stretch to the ceiling, multiply when they collided, occupy entire electrified reels and feed a global multiplier during something specifically called Eradication Spins.
The gremlin had survived all of it.
At €59.80 profit, I was prepared to accept that Cloudforge was less an extermination programme than an extremely elaborate disagreement.
Zombie Road gave me a 0.4x and a silent treatment.