4ThePlayer, from the moment they entered the gambling industry, have set themselves up to be something of an advocate for players – their name alone makes this clear. They have always been fairly open regarding their desire to release games that they themselves would want to play, giving players as much choice as possible. This is clear in a number of the team‘s releases, like 6 Wild Sharks, 7 Elements, and most recently 4 Secret Pyramids – even going as far as to give players a choice of where their x2 is applied, if activated. If you think the choice offered has been good so far, you're in for a treat today, as we take a look at their upcoming release, 4 Deals With The Devil – a highly volatile release, with wins available up to 5,000x bet, and a fixed RTP of 95.0%.
Visually, graphics are clean, crisp, and bold – it's easy both to differentiate between non-premium and premium symbols, and to see what's going on. The whole thing has a very red, almost Vegas feel to it, especially with 7s, dice, and cherries acting as symbols – not to mention the woman in the red dress with a thigh hit slit (or the pleather catsuit). Audios aren't distracting, and fit in nicely.
4 Deals With The Devil Base Features
Taking place across 6 reels, wins are formed on 4 Deals With The Devil by matching at least 2 or 3 symbols on adjacent reels, beginning with the leftmost reel. Symbols can land in any position on the reels, giving a total of 4,096 ways to win. The pay table begins with non-premiums – 10s and Js both award 0.20 and 1.50x bet for wins between 3 and 6 of a kind, with these values increasing to 0.30 and 2x bet for 3 and 6 of a kind Qs and Ks. Rounding up the lower half of the pay table are As, paying between 0.40 and 2.50x bet, again for wins between 3 and 6 of a kind.
In the mid range we have red dice and cherries, awarding values between 0.50 and 3x bet for wins between 3 and 6 of a kind, followed by premiums, beginning with heart signet rings – awarding wins of 0.20x bet for 2 of a kind (the first symbol to pay 2 ways), increasing to 4x bet when landing 6 of a kind. Next up are black cats, and gargoyles – land between 2 and 6 of a kind of either to see wins between 0.40 and 6x bet. The highest paying symbol available is the fiery 7 – land 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 to see wins of 1, 3, 4, 5, or 7x bet, respectively. Finally, there are Wild symbols, which substitute for all symbols except Scatters, but we'll explain those in a moment.
The first thing to discuss in 4 Deals With the Devil is BIG REEL Portrait Mode™, 4ThePlayer‘s own mechanic. BIG REEL Portrait Mode enables players to choose when playing on mobile if they would like to play classic small reels, or BIG REEL Portrait Mode, wherein the reels are larger, stacked on top of each other, spinning right to left and paying out top to bottom. Payouts and game features remain unchanged in BIG REEL Portrait Mode, but it does make the whole thing a lot more aesthetically pleasing and tidier once you can wrap your head around the reels paying from top to bottom. If you can't, don't worry – you can still choose to select ‘Classic' mode.
Alright, with symbols and reels out of the way, let's take a look at the most important aspect of 4 Deals With The Devil – the deals, of course. When you first load the game up, there is a choice to be made – what bonus do you want to play for? You can choose to cool things down, or turn the heat up to the extreme, with four possible choices.
- Cool – Rated 2/5 for potential returns, but 4/5 for frequency, landing a cool bonus will award 9 Free Spins with 1 Expanding Wild.
- Medium – Rated 3/5 for potential returns, and 3/5 for frequency, landing a medium bonus will award 12 Free Spins with 2 Expanding Wilds.
- Hot – Rated 4/5 for potential returns, but 2/5 for frequency, landing a hot bonus will award 15 Free Spins with 3 Expanding and Jumping Wilds.
- Xtra Hot – Rated 5/5 for potential returns, but 1/5 for frequency, landing an xtra hot bonus will award 20 Free Spins with 4 Expanding and Jumping Wilds.
You can change the bonus you have chosen at any point by clicking ‘change bonus' above the reels, and before making your decision it is possible to view example bonus wins.
Look out for Wild symbols landing in the base game – when a Wild lands in any position, a Wild Respin is awarded. The Wild will lock for the respin, and as more Wilds land more respins are awarded. Alongside this, any Wilds already on the reels will expand in height by one for every respin. This gives the potential to land Wild Reels, if enough respins occur – 3 respins are required to move a Wild from being one symbol, to full reel height.
4 Deals With The Devil Bonus
There's no set amount of Scatter symbols required to trigger a bonus, as each deal requires a different amount:
- Cool – 4 or more Scatters
- Medium – 8 or more Scatters
- Hot – 12 or more Scatters
- Xtra Hot – 16 or more Scatters
Although it seems like 16 Scatters is a big requirement on a reel space of only 24 symbols, special spins take place where all reels slow-spin, with stacked Scatters.
Players have the chance to trigger features other than the one associated with their chosen deal – this happens when you hit a bonus trigger other than the one you have chosen. So, let's say you are playing the Hot Deal, which requires 12 Scatter symbols, but you land 16 Scatter symbols.
At this point, you will be awarded a spin on the Wheels of Hell, for a chance to play the more lucrative feature. The wheel, which is a pie gamble, will display your chance of winning in purple, and your chance of losing in red, but don't worry – losing on the Wheels of Hell when you are gambling for a higher feature will simply mean you play through the feature of your chosen deal. If you land fewer symbols than you need for your deal, but enough to trigger a smaller feature, you can spin the Wheels of Hell for the smaller bonus – in this circumstance, losing the gamble means you get no bonus.
With the Wheels of Hell, you can upgrade your smaller bonuses to bigger, or get the chance to win smaller, more frequent bonuses whilst waiting for your fierier ones.
Free Spin features and the behaviour of Wilds depend on the deal you have chosen before triggering the feature (or the feature you have won on the Wheels of Hell):
- Cool – 9 Free Spins with one Wild symbol locked on a random reel. The Wild begins at 1 symbol height, but can expand as big as 4 symbols tall. Once expanded, the Wild can move to a different reel, locking in place until another expansion happens.
- Medium – 12 Free Spins with two Wild symbols locked on two random reels. These Wilds begin at 1 symbol height, but can expand as big as 4 symbols tall. Once one Wild has expanded, both Wilds can move to a different reel, and will lock in place until another expansion happens.
- Hot – 15 Free Spins with 3 Expanding and Jumping Wilds. These Wilds begin at 1 symbol height, but can expand as big as 4 symbols tall. They roam around the reels regardless of size.
- Xtra Hot – 20 Free Spins with 4 Expanding and Jumping Wilds. These Wilds begin at 1 symbol height, but can expand as big as 4 symbols tall. They roam around the reels regardless of size.
Once Wild symbols have expanded, they cannot shrink again. Free Spins can be re-triggered by lading 4 Scatters, which awards +4 spins.
It is possible to buy one of the above features in 4 Deals With The Devil:
- Cool – 30x bet
- Medium – 50x bet
- Hot – 100x bet
- Xtra Hot – 400x bet
First Impression
4ThePlayer are one of the best at giving players a choice in how their game plays out, and 4 Deals With The Devil serves to take that to a new level. The best thing about this release is that it's so clear which bonus has the best potential – there are so many games on the market offering a choice, but we're never really sure what the difference is. That isn't the case here – it's not that there's a ‘better' overall choice per se, but there's a clear winner for potential. With 4 Jumping, Expanding Wilds in Xtra Hot Free Spins, it's easy to see how this release is capable of producing wins up to 5,000x bet.
Everything is explained pretty well too, and adding in ‘Example Bonus Wins' is a nice touch, especially with the transparency of showing all bonus wins, not just the best – helping players to see that choosing the Hot Deal doesn't necessarily mean every bonus will pay more than a Medium bonus could.
That said, the excitement of the Hot/Xtra Hot are just on a different Level compared to the Cool/Medium options – particularly with Jumping Wilds. Once you get into one of these top two bonuses, things really kick off, in a great way. If you're not feeling brave enough to go Hot or Xtra Hot (am I reviewing Nando's?), you can go Cool or Medium, and hope for the Wheels of Hell. Making things even better is the fixed RTP of 95.0% – very rare to see these days.
4 Deals With The Devil continues the work 4ThePlayer have done so far, truly putting things back into the hands of players, and it's worth a go if you like to have that level of control. Remember, though – volatility is still an overall high on this release, so don't be expecting an easy ride. If things line up in the right way, however, you're in for a treat.
*The screenshots taken of games reviewed on this site are taken from Demo Play, as reviews are often written before games are released for real play.
