18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The Ministry announced €37.40 as the greatest industrial victory in recorded history.
Three factories appeared behind the reels.
A brass band started.
A giant red banner dropped from the top of the screen.
CONFIRMED NATIONAL PROSPERITY.
The balance had increased by €37.40.
Nobody had built a factory.
Nobody had increased national prosperity.
A loudspeaker had copied four tractor symbols across one row while a man in a military coat stared out of a poster and pointed toward the horizon as though he had personally invented agriculture.
The game treated the result as the economic event of the century.
I checked the balance.
€169.60.
The nation was apparently booming.
I was still €10.40 down.
That was approximately twenty minutes into Propaganda 2.
It had taken considerably less time to establish that the numbers on the bottom of the screen and the information provided by the government above it were operating independently.
I had started with €180.00.
The stake was €1.20.
The reels occupied a monumental square of red stone beneath enormous banners, floodlights and a concrete balcony containing a smiling leader whose portrait appeared in enough places to suggest he had personally approved the wallpaper.
Five reels.
Four rows.
Factory chimneys in the background.
Red flags.
Searchlights.
A television tower.
The symbols included tractors, medals, newspapers, factory gates, television sets and stern portraits of citizens who looked like they had been photographed immediately after being told smiling was optional but remembered.
The leader himself appeared as the highest symbol.
He faced left on some reels.
Right on others.
Forward on the posters.
There were enough versions of him to make it unclear who was actually running the country.
My first spin returned nothing.
A message flashed above the reels.
PRODUCTIVITY MAINTAINED.
Second spin.
€0.60.
STABLE GROWTH.
Third spin.
Nothing.
SUCCESSFUL CONSOLIDATION.
By the fourth spin I had started reading the balance before the headlines.
This seemed healthier.
A newspaper symbol landed on the first three reels for €1.80.
The game played trumpets.
A red stamp descended from above.
APPROVED.
The stamp hit the centre newspaper.
The surrounding low symbols shook.
Two card ranks were replaced by additional newspapers.
Another line formed.
The total climbed to €4.80.
The leader’s portrait flashed.
REVISED RESULT.
That was the first time the Ministry changed something that had already happened.
It would not be the last.
The next seven or eight spins were less ambitious.
A tractor paid €1.20.
Three medals produced €2.40.
Nothing.
Nothing.
A line of television sets stopped one reel short.
Then a loudspeaker landed on reel two.
It rotated toward the right side of the grid.
A deep announcement played.
The television symbol beside it began flashing.
One television became two.
Two became three.
The entire row filled with televisions.
€8.40.
Fireworks appeared behind the factory.
The leader raised one hand from the balcony.
MASS COMMUNICATION ACHIEVEMENT.
The loudspeaker had successfully informed every television that it was now also a television.
State broadcasting had reached full efficiency.
I continued.
The balance moved around €173.
Then €166.
Then €161.
The announcements remained extremely positive.
A €0.40 return generated RURAL EXPANSION.
A €1.20 win became INDUSTRIAL RECORD.
A completely dead spin produced STRATEGIC PAUSE.
This was useful.
I had previously considered a dead spin to be a dead spin.
The Ministry had classified it as strategic.
Two Scatters landed at €1.20.
They were red broadcast towers surrounded by rotating white rings.
One arrived on reel one.
Another on reel four.
The reels slowed.
Nothing appeared between them.
A black bar suddenly slid across reel three.
CENSORED.
The bar covered the entire middle section.
For a moment there was no way to know whether the missing Scatter was underneath it.
The bar lifted.
There was a newspaper.
Not even a particularly valuable newspaper.
The game had censored a losing result and then declassified it without improvement.
The leader remained on the balcony.
I spun again.
Another pair of Scatters appeared nine spins later.
This time reels two and five.
No black bar.
No rescue.
No feature.
A small slogan appeared.
THE PLAN CONTINUES.
The plan was beginning to resemble waiting.
At €154.80, a red stamp landed beside a group of low symbols.
The stamp slammed down.
REASSIGNED.
Three symbols changed into leader portraits.
The reels paused.
The first three reels now contained enough identical heads to form several lines.
€14.40.
A medal appeared over the total.
The leader’s portrait in the background became larger.
The factory chimneys released coloured smoke.
One man had multiplied himself across the reels and immediately been awarded for increased output.
That was the strongest ordinary hit so far.
I stayed at €1.20.
Nothing in the session suggested the correct response to government-controlled mathematics was a larger stake.
The balance hovered around €158.
A loudspeaker broadcast tractors for €6.00.
A stamp turned newspapers into medals and added €3.60.
Then came another stretch where the slogans performed more work than the symbols.
DEVELOPMENT.
UNITY.
FORWARD MOMENTUM.
Nothing.
€0.60.
Nothing.
€1.20.
If the Ministry had been responsible for displaying the balance, I suspected I would have been at €900 by now.
The actual number dropped below €150.
That was where the third Scatter finally arrived.
Reel one stopped with a broadcast tower.
Reel three produced another.
Reel five slowed.
A tractor.
The red stamp appeared.
It hovered over the tractor.
The tractor disappeared.
Broadcast tower.
Three.
The entire screen changed.
Not subtly.
Searchlights swept across the reels.
Flags dropped from both sides.
The leader’s portrait enlarged until his chin occupied approximately the same amount of screen space as reel four.
TEN FREE SPINS.
NATIONAL BROADCAST.
The bonus had been triggered by rewriting a tractor.
History had been corrected before it had technically finished occurring.
An Approval Meter appeared above the reels.
It started empty.
The first Free Spin landed a leader portrait and two newspapers.
€3.20.
A green segment filled in the meter.
Second spin.
Nothing.
The meter remained where it was.
No slogan appeared.
Apparently even propaganda had limits.
Third spin.
A loudspeaker landed beside medals.
It broadcast them across the row.
Five medals.
€7.60.
Another segment filled.
The fourth spin placed two leader portraits together.
A stamp landed below them.
It converted a television into another portrait.
€9.20.
The meter crossed its first marker.
The background changed.
More flags.
More searchlights.
A second balcony appeared.
There was still only one leader.
He now had two balconies.
The fifth spin produced newspapers and tractors for €2.40.
Then the sixth arrived.
Loudspeaker on reel one.
Leader portrait beside it.
The loudspeaker turned.
The leader spread across the entire row.
Five identical heads.
The screen froze.
The factory sirens started.
The balcony version of the leader saluted the reel versions of the leader.
The reel versions stared forward.
The total climbed.
€21.80.
This created enough Approval to push the meter into another section.
A huge red 2x appeared above the grid.
DOUBLE PRODUCTIVITY.
The workers had not changed.
The factories had not changed.
The reels had not changed.
Productivity had doubled because the sign said so.
Spin seven returned €4.00 before the multiplier.
€8.00.
The trumpet section nearly lost control.
Spin eight landed another red stamp.
Three newspapers became medals.
€5.20 became €10.40.
The Approval Meter moved again.
The leader now appeared on the balcony, the reels, the background poster and a medal hanging above the counter.
At that point the country contained more leader than land.
Two spins remained.
The ninth paid nothing.
No correction arrived.
No loudspeaker.
No stamp.
The screen simply moved to the final spin.
Two Scatters landed again.
They did not retrigger.
They just sat on opposite sides of the reels broadcasting toward one another while a tractor occupied the middle.
The tractor remained a tractor.
The Ministry had apparently exhausted its ability to revise transport.
A line of leader portraits formed underneath.
Base value €7.00.
2x.
€14.00.
The feature total reached €74.80.
The game erupted.
Flags.
Confetti.
Searchlights.
Factory smoke.
A parade moved across the bottom of the screen.
The leader appeared inside a golden frame.
HISTORIC SURPLUS ACHIEVED.
The feature ended.
My balance returned at €211.60.
I had started at €180.
Actual profit: €31.60.
The screen announced:
NATIONAL OUTPUT +312%.
A graph appeared behind the reels.
The line went almost vertically upward.
There were no labels on either axis.
A medal rotated beside it.
The leader pointed at the graph.
I left the stake untouched.
I also left the spin button untouched.
The balance said €211.60.
The banner said the nation had entered an unprecedented age of prosperity.
The factory chimneys fired one final burst of red smoke.
Somewhere inside the Ministry, €31.60 had become three hundred and twelve percent.
For once, I preferred their version.
Buggin spins like a 5-reel confession booth with autoplay enabled.