Monster Cravings Casino Games
One of the more recent pushes in the gambling industry – both online and at live casinos – is to find ways to appeal to younger audiences who might not be interested in slots or some other traditional betting games. There have been a number of suggestions on how this might be done, but one particular idea has been to make these machines more like the video games that younger adults have grown up with their whole lives.
One great example of this is Jackpot Joy’s new game, Monster Cravings. When you break it down, it is a very simple way to make quick bets and get nearly instant payouts. But that core mechanic is based in gameplay that feels a lot like the classic computer game Dig Dug, with a character digging holes and tunnels in order to uncover hidden prizes.
Underground Sweets
Monster Cravings is a game that stars “Digsby,” a little green monster who seems to have an insatiable desire for candy. Some of these candies are just food, but others hide prizes, and your goal is to find the pieces that will award you the most cash. The game takes place in a very game-like setting: you’ll see Digsby near the top of the screen in what looks like a large underground area, where he has begun to dig a hole. There are gummy bears, hard candies, chocolates, and more. Each candy has the same odds of offering you a prize; the range of foods is just there to provide some graphical variety.
At the start of the game, you’ll be able to set an amount that you’d like to bet. This bet is made per candy, as every round will see Digsby gobble up a set number of the pieces. The range of bet sizes will vary depending on where you play, but by default, you can wager anywhere from 0.05 units to 10 units per candy.
The simplest way to start the game is by hitting the “play five” button, which will start a round in which Digsby will find five sweets to eat. If you’d like more customization, you can click around the screen to make your own path through the ground, selecting as many candies as you like. In that case, you’ll pay the betting price for each piece, then click the “Pick N Play” button to start your round.
Either way, once you trigger the game to begin, Disgby will begin eating his way through the dirt, stopping to munch on any food he might come across. Sometimes, nothing will happen: this is the equivalent of losing that particular bet. In other cases, you may reveal a prize amount. This prize could be anywhere from a small fraction of the cost of your bet to a big win: the maximum base prize is 200 times your initial bet.
But you’re not limited to just these basic wins. Each time you score a win, the multiplier bar in the upper left increases. Your second consecutive prize will come with a 2x multiplier, with future wins earning 3x, 4x, or up to 5x for your fifth win in a row. However, any loss along the way will reset the bar, bringing you back down to the base prize amount.
The Sugar Rush
If you manage to hit five consecutive prizes, then you’ll enter a special bonus round known as the sugar rush. When this occurs, you’ll be awarded with 20 free candies. During this round, you’ll have the same multiplier rules, except there will be no upper limit on how high that multiple can go. In addition, every time that you manage to eat three winning candies in a row, you’ll get an additional five free plays. If you make a longer prize combination, you’ll get an additional five more free rounds for every additional win.
When you are eligible for a sugar rush, it will begin immediately: you will not be charged for candies that Digsby has yet to eat. The special feature will continue until you run out of free plays. One thing to note is that your progress towards a sugar rush normally carries over from wager to wager: if you finish a round with, say, three wins in a row, you only need to hit two more at the start of your next play to trigger the bonus. However, this is only true if you keep the same bet sizing between plays – any change (up or down) will reset your progress.
Not a Strategic Test
Monster Cravings isn’t a game that will test your brainpower or ask you to come up with any sort of complex strategies for optimal play. Everything you do in this game is based entirely on luck: there’s no way to know which candy pieces will hide money, and which are blanks, so the best you can do is hope for some big wins at the right times. You might think the path you pick for Digsby matters, but it doesn’t: there’s no charge for digging through empty spaces, so there is no reason to worry about finding an optimal path or anything like that.
There is one rare spot where your decision making can actually cost you a tiny bit of value. When you’ve booked some consecutive wins to finish up a round, you should neither quit nor change the size of your bets. Changing the size of your bets is an obvious mistake: that will wipe your multiplier, which is a waste. But you shouldn’t stop playing either, as the game is tilted to your advantage when your wins will be doubled, tripled, or quadrupled. If you’re in one of these situations, and you planned on ending your session, it’s worth playing at least one candy at a time until you hit a loss.
This Monster Isn’t Scary
Monster Cravings is, ultimately, a very simple game, one that will fit in naturally with the scratch cards, keno, and other fixed-odds games usually found under the specialty tab at online casino sites. If you’re someone who enjoys straightforward play with few surprises, but likes to have some visual excitement to drive the action, than the adventures of Digsby are likely to keep you occupied for a long while.
Those looking for something a bit more stimulating or engaging might want to look elsewhere, however. That said, there are a few exciting moments during play: in particular, the sugar rush feature can build some big prizes in a hurry, which is fun no matter what kinds of games you normally play.
In the end, we have to recommend this game mainly for those who want a relaxed, laid back experience where they can play more or less on autopilot. But while this may not be a game for everyone, we think that this line of gaming – where the divide between casino gambling and video games gets blurred a bit – is definitely an avenue that software developers should continue to explore.
