With cartoonish graphics and animations based on several popular alien invasion movies, OpenBet software’s Planet X is a whimsical slot with a few interesting bonuses to make up for its rather cavalier treatment of planet-wide destruction and despair. The necking couple at the drive-in might get levitated out of their car, the terrified mom may lose her little boy, the paranoid guy with the gun may go berserk, but there will always be good prizes on offer.
The five reels in Planet X are designed as celluloid film strips, each with three frames visible. Players can adjust the 20 pay lines as well as the bets per line, which range from 2 to 2,500 coins.
Four Bonus Features on Offer
There are two bonus icons on Planet X: a Man in Black-style Mystery Man, and a chunky Bonus Robot. Between them, however, they can trigger four different bonus rounds. Both the symbols are Scatters, so they do not have to be on the same pay line; three in any position will trigger a bonus round.
Three or more Mystery Man Scatters will pay the player the total bet back immediately. They will then either activate a round of between 15 and 60 free spins, during which Super Wilds can appear on the reels and then stick in place for the remainder of the free spins, boosting the number of winning combos possible, or they will trigger the Feature Game. This takes place on a new screen, with the player using a spaceship to destroy items on a farmer’s land, winning a mystery prize for each hit. The round ends when the farmer is blasted.
Two Robot Bonus Games
A boxy old-school robot is the other Scatter, and three in any position wins the player a single line bet back. But this icon also triggers one of two other bonus features. The player gets to choose whether to play Alien Square or Metal Madness.
On Alien Square, the player must pick boxes on a 3X3 tic-tac-toe grid, racking up prizes as each square is revealed. The player must get a straight line of three 0s to win the accumulated prizes, and if they succeed on one grid they can collect or move on to the next grid. However, any Xs the player reveals remain on the scoreboard, and if the player unveils a total of six Xs anywhere, the round ends and they lose the prize.
In Metal Madness, the player watches the huge robot stomp around a city, as prizes and multipliers increase according to the objects he crushes. A Defcon multiplier also increases during this round, and the player is again faced with choices to continue for bigger prizes, while running the risk of losing what they have accumulated.
A Wide Range of Ordinary Symbols
Planet X uses 11 other symbols in base play. All require three or more successive matches on a pay line from Reel 1 to win prizes, starting with the necking couple, which wins 1 coin for three of a kind. In ascending order of value, then there is a panicking man, the US capitol, a flying saucer, a screaming mom, a King planet, a three-eyed green alien, an Ace planet and a terrified boy. For five matches, the last wins 250 coins. Purple Planet X is the Wild, and three or more Earth symbols will win one of the game’s three progressive jackpots.