Pop Cop: Slot Overview

Have you ever peeped yourself in the mirror and been so unexcited by what you saw you ran out that very day to buy a new wardrobe of clothes, cut your hair a different way, maybe get a tattoo, all in an effort to change your style? It feels like this is what happened to developer Peter & Sons before the studio designed the online slot Pop Cop. Now, it's possible the game is solely aimed towards the Japanese market, but having said that, Pop Cop is a game that is so out of character that if you went in not knowing, Peter & Sons would be one of the last studios you'd think were responsible. If you're ready to see a studio publicly flirting with a totally different style, come take a look.

How to describe Pop Cop? It looks like a hardcore Asian anime/manga extravaganza that has leapt right out of the 1990s. Think Rototom drums, a lot of pink and cyan, a palm tree beach, and unusual characters, including a very curvy cop lady. The location is Neopolis, where the aforementioned policewoman, scantily clad for big count-up scenes, has gotten bored with her routine and now zips about on her motocompo through thug-infested streets, thwarting heists, claiming the spoils for herself. This is the game's paraphrased backstory, a fitting one, too, since it's about as odd as everything else found in Pop Cop. Not bad weird, necessarily, just a bit baffling considering the studio's prior tendency for creating cute, cartoony slots in its very distinctive graphical style.

For the demo at least, perhaps this will change in a live setting; bets of 10 to 5,000 per spin may be set, and whether that's in coins or Yen was not clear. For an extra 20% per spin, players can activate the Golden Bet, which increases the chance of triggering free spins. When the Golden Bet is active, Pop Cop's RTP is 96.1%, whereas when it is switched off, the RTP is 96.3%. In this highly volatile slot, the action is carried out on a 6-reel, 5-row reelset, which uses a scatter-paying mechanism to create wins.

The cascading wins mechanic takes the symbols from a scatter win off the board, causing other symbols to drop down and fill the gaps. This provides another chance to win on the same spin and cascades end when a new win is not created after a drop. When 8 or more identical symbols are in view on the reels, in any position, a win is formed. Written characters make up Pop Cop's low pay symbols, followed by 4 actual characters as the 4 high pays. When hitting an 8-symbol winning scatter, the payouts are 0.25 to 10 times the bet, or 2 to 50 times the bet is paid for landing 11+ matching symbols.

Pop Cop: Slot Features

The features populating Neopolis are cascades, area multipliers, free spins, and a free spins buy.

Area Multiplier

Marked areas of various sizes may randomly appear on the grid with a multiplier value up to x10 in the base game associated with it. The multiplier value is attached to certain symbols within the marked area, including scatters. If, for example, 8 matching symbols are in view, and 3 of them are in the area showing an x15 multiplier, then an x45 multiplier will be applied to the win.

Free Spins

Hitting 4 scatters awards 10 free spins, plus 5 extra spins are awarded for each scatter beyond 4. In addition, payout values for 3, 4, or 5+ scatters in view are 3x, 5x, or 100x the bet, respectively. During the round, landing 3 or more scatters grants an extra 5 free spins. Areas appear to trigger more frequently in free spins compared to the base game, though this isn't officially stated in the game rules. Area multipliers in free spins can be x5, x10, x15, x20, or x50.

Buy Free Spins

Players can click the shopping trolly button to buy 10 to 20 random free spins for the cost of 160 times the bet.

Pop Cop: Slot Verdict

Reviewing Pop Cop was like walking along the high street and seeing a friend you thought was starchily straight-edged darting out of an 'adult' shop with a suspicious brown package under their arm. Hey, they're a grown up, and what is consensually and legally done in the privacy of their home is their business, but who saw that one coming? The point is that Pop Cop is a rather risqué release for Peter & Sons. Is it a one-off experiment, like a do-it at college where everyone's on an experimental buzz, or is this evidence of the studio's new design path? As mentioned at the beginning of the review, the game might have been created primarily for the Japanese audience, which would explain its design and features more clearly.

As for the gameplay, well, it's not terrible. Scatter-paying slots have really blown up, and Pop Cop's area multiplier mechanic brings something a little unusual to the party. Multiplier values, since they are tallied up from the individual symbols carrying one, might technically get quite chunky, assisting players attack the game's 10,000x the bet win cap.

It's been a while since a slot came along that created so many 'wtf?' moments. Even now, with the review complete, it's hard to know what to make of Pop Cop. Like a piece of confusing modern art, Pop Cop feels like one of those creative endeavours a tight-knit clique of players will go weak at the knees over while others sit there going 'huh?'