Tycoons review

Theme and Storyline

Tycoons takes you into the lives of the nouveau riche. The kind of silicon valley nerd or criminal that turned airy ideas into concrete billions, or an oil sheikhs prince buying up Ferraris with Daddy’s money.

It captures the complete lack of taste and style such people have. The cars are flashy, and the champagne flows. But it will be up to the player to give these characters some sort of meaning to their existence.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The slot itself is pretty ugly. The graphics are horrible 3D renderings arranged crudely in a mess on a McMansion driveway background.

The animations don’t add much to the experience except drawing the eye to new design flaws everytime they move. Wear dark glasses with this game because just looking at it will give you a headache.

The music is wildly out of sync with the rest of the slot. As a result, it is almost bearable, but also adds nothing to the experience. Whoever in Betsoft designed this game is unlikely to become a tycoon of anything themselves.

Gameplay

Tycoons is a five reel slot with three rows. There are up to thirty winlines to play, but players can adjust that, playing as few lines as one.

There is no gamble feature.

The bonuses manage to be overcomplicated without adding any element of fun or challenge to the game. So here, too, the gameplay is a flop.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the Card and Bonus symbols.

Three or more Bonus symbols anywhere on the reel will trigger the Bonus Feature. This awards a randomised cash win.

Getting a winning combination with a symbol that has an "fs" symbol in the corner triggers the Free Spin bonus. If there are three symbols in the winning combination, the player gets three free spins. Four symbol combos trigger six spins; and five symbol combos trigger twelve free spins.

Three or more Card symbols trigger the Card Bonus, in which you must guess which of the four tycoons will win the poker hand. Guess correctly and you will win a further cash prize.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 95.34%, well below our yardstick for average of roughly 96%.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.30 up to a maximum of $/£/€30.00 per spin.

The volatility of this game is medium, which makes it a bad match for our preferred slot machine strategies, especially when combined with the low RTP. Our slot strategies target the highest possible volatility.

Conclusion

With its hideous front end, Tycoons is not making many friends. The graphics are ugly, the design cluttered, and the music completely out of keeping with the rest of the game.

Then when you get under the hood, things don’t improve. An RTP of just 95.34%, medium volatility, multiple boring bonus games.

It fails in almost every imaginable way. We do not recommend it.