18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The marshmallow had braces.
Not small braces either.
A full mouth of shiny metal squares attached to something whose normal structural purpose is to collapse gently into hot chocolate.
He grinned from the left side of the screen with the confidence of a man who had never had to explain his dental plan.
Behind the reels sat four enormous coloured mouths.
Red.
Green.
Yellow.
Pink.
All of them wide open.
All of them apparently waiting to be fed.
I had €31.70 and absolutely no intention of finding out what an orthodontist charges when the patient is made from sugar, so I started at €0.20.
The reels were mostly candy.
Striped hearts.
Jelly beans.
Peppermints.
Hard blue sweets.
Letters that looked as though somebody had made the alphabet from gummy worms and then polished it.
The first few spins returned bits and pieces.
Three sweets for €0.40.
A line of J symbols.
Another small hit through some peppermint things.
Nothing particularly dramatic.
Then a WildSurge symbol landed.
The marshmallow woke up.
A wheel spun above the reels.
The result created a patch of Wilds through part of the grid.
The line paid.
Small.
The zone disappeared.
The marshmallow kept smiling.
Fine.
At least the braces had machinery attached.
A Double WildSurge arrived several spins later.
Two little orange W symbols appeared instead of one.
Two separate areas of the reels became Wild.
A couple of candy combinations crossed them for a useful return.
Still nothing huge, but the screen had established its preferred method of solving confectionery problems:
turn more of the sweets into Wilds until something connects.
There was also a number above the reels.
It had started at 50.
Each spin moved it downward.
That became much more interesting than it should have.
The candy wins remained ordinary.
The number did not.
Every spin was apparently teaching the marshmallow something.
I had no idea what a confection with corrective dental equipment needed fifty spins to learn, but now I was committed to the educational process.
The red mouth above the reels collected a matching Bonus symbol.
It got slightly fatter.
The green one collected another.
Then pink.
None of them did anything.
They just sat there swelling happily.
Four gummy mouths being progressively fed while the man with braces watched from the side.
This felt less like a slot and more like a waiting room outside a dental surgery that had made several catastrophic branding decisions.
The counter kept falling.
Thirty-eight.
Thirty-seven.
A heart combination returned €0.60.
Thirty-six.
A WildSurge wheel created another zone and produced almost nothing useful.
Thirty-five.
The marshmallow seemed pleased regardless.
He had one emotional setting.
Maximum satisfaction with whatever was happening to his own teeth.
The sweets continued.
Peppermint.
Blue candy.
Orange jelly bean.
A.
K.
Q.
J.
Every now and then, one of those Bonus symbols dropped into a matching mouth above.
Red ate red.
Green ate green.
Yellow ate yellow.
Pink ate pink.
They expanded a little.
Still no feature.
I started regarding them as four children being given sweets before dinner and then rewarded for visible abdominal growth.
The counter reached 20.
Then 19.
Then 18.
By now the balance had slipped a little below €30.
Still fine.
The important thing was that the marshmallow was thirteen spins away from professional development.
I had somehow stopped measuring the session in euros and started measuring it in candy qualifications.
At 9, another Double WildSurge appeared.
Two Wild zones.
One landed over mostly useless letters.
The other caught a pair of paying sweets.
€0.80.
The marshmallow had nine spins left and had produced eighty cents.
Education is expensive.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Then the counter hit zero.
Nothing exploded.
Nobody graduated.
No brass band.
The reels simply moved on with the quiet confidence of something that had just added another dangerous tool to the box.
The next counter started again.
And now another WildSurge option had become available.
Wild Column.
Of course.
The marshmallow had spent fifty spins learning how to make vertical sugar.
A few spins later, the symbol landed.
Wheel.
It stopped on the new option.
Two reels transformed into full Wild stacks.
Existing Wild positions inside them upgraded to x2.
The whole middle of the grid suddenly looked as if someone had taken two industrial strips of melted marshmallow and welded them straight down through the candy.
Lines crossed both.
A peppermint line.
A heart line.
One combination used the multiplied Wilds.
The win climbed to €4.20.
There it was.
Fifty spins of training had finally produced something you could put on a résumé.
The balance moved back above €30.
The marshmallow grinned wider.
Impossible anatomically, but he found a way.
Then the reels went quiet again.
Candy.
Letters.
More candy.
The four mouths kept eating Bonus symbols whenever they appeared.
Green got another.
Yellow.
Red.
Still nothing.
Their pots visibly grew, but no proper LockNWin arrived.
That was almost funnier.
The mouths looked increasingly proud of themselves while accomplishing absolutely nothing.
Pink had eaten enough to resemble an inflatable gumdrop with dental ambitions.
No trigger.
The marshmallow stared at them.
I stared at him.
Nobody was prepared to admit the whole room was just consuming sugar recreationally.
The new counter kept moving.
Forty-three.
Forty-two.
Another regular WildSurge.
This one produced a modest Wild zone.
€0.60.
Thirty-eight.
A Double created two zones.
Nothing connected properly.
Thirty-seven.
Some blue candies paid.
Thirty-six.
The first fifty spins had now created a problem.
I knew there was another unlock at 100.
That was only fifty more.
Which is precisely how confectionery machinery gets you.
Nobody voluntarily sits down and says, “I am going to spend one hundred spins teaching a marshmallow increasingly invasive Wild techniques.”
You say, “I am already halfway there.”
The balance drifted under €30 again.
Still €0.20.
I was not raising it.
The marshmallow could complete his education at the original tuition rate.
The bonus mouths kept being fed.
Red.
Green.
Pink.
The pots grew.
No LockNWin.
One yellow star landed on reel two.
Those stars could eventually force the Bonus Wheel if one had been collected on every reel.
Interesting.
Then nothing followed.
The star effectively became another unfinished confectionery project.
At 22 on the second countdown, another Wild Column event landed.
Only one reel went fully Wild this time.
A couple of x2 positions appeared inside.
The surrounding sweets refused to cooperate.
€0.40.
Very good.
The marshmallow had learned vertical integration and was using it to pay two bets.
A hard blue candy line did better a few spins later.
Then several dead spins.
The balance reached €28.90 with the second threshold approaching.
Six.
Five.
Four.
The giant mouths above were still waiting.
Three.
Pink collected another Bonus symbol.
Still nothing.
Two.
One.
Zero.
One hundred spins.
The next unlock became available.
Wild Row.
Of course it did.
Fifty spins to learn columns.
Another fifty to discover horizontal movement.
At this rate the marshmallow was going to invent the rectangle sometime after lunch.
The counter reset again.
I gave him twelve more spins.
Not fifty.
Twelve.
There are limits to supporting education.
The first few did nothing.
A green candy line.
Then a regular WildSurge that created a tiny useful zone and returned €0.40.
The mouths continued to eat.
Still no proper feature.
Then the WildSurge symbol appeared again.
The wheel spun.
Wild Row.
Good.
We were using the diploma immediately.
Two rows converted into Wilds.
Existing Wilds inside them gained x2.
The middle of the screen became a horizontal slab of sticky orange and yellow W symbols.
Candy underneath.
Candy above.
Wild sugar straight through the centre.
Several paylines crossed.
One started with enough Wilds to substitute into the higher-paying candy.
Another picked up an x2.
The total climbed to €3.20.
Not enormous.
But it did almost exactly what I needed.
The balance returned to €30.90.
I had started with €31.70.
One hundred and twelve spins.
Two new WildSurge techniques.
Several swollen bonus mouths.
One unfinished star collection.
No Free Spins.
No LockNWin.
No Jackpot.
Eighty cents missing.
The marshmallow, meanwhile, had improved enormously.
At the start, he could turn a small patch of sweets Wild.
Fifty spins later he had learned columns.
At one hundred he discovered rows.
The progression strip above the reels still had more icons waiting farther along.
Crosses.
Respins.
Symbol removal.
Multiplier upgrades.
Eventually something involving so many Wilds that the entire candy shop would presumably require structural evacuation.
The fresh counter had already started counting down again.
Forty-something.
The marshmallow smiled through his braces.
He was ready for the next lesson.
I wasn’t paying for his degree.
Someone called Wild 1 “medium volatility.” That’s how I know they never played it.