Invaders from the Planet Moolah Slots

Alien themed games are a dime a dozen in the slots world. But WMS’ Invaders from the Planet Moolah is unlike any alien slot out there.

The invaders in this 5 reel, 25 pay line game aren’t little green men, but rather cows in flying saucers. The theme immediately prepares you for a quirky game that has the potential to keep youentertained for hours.

The most distinguishable feature in Invaders from the Planet Moolah is the five cows in flying saucers hovering above each reel.

This has more importance than just fitting into the unusual theme because these cows zap symbols from winning pay lines and make them disappear. In the case of the cow wild symbols, the flyingsaucers beam them up.

The removal of these winning symbols allows symbols to fall from above and create more winning combinations, a.k.a. cascading reels.

You don’t get a multiplier as more wins keep falling from above. This is a downside because most other cascading reel slots offer multipliers that increase as you earn more cascading wins.

But you can get free spins with four consecutive wins, which we’ll cover in the features section.

The background looks like any other alien slot, with different planets and stars. You’ll also hear alien type noises while you’re playing.

Symbols and payouts for Invaders from the Planet Moolah are as follows:

• Cow Wild

  Cows substitute for all other symbols and appear on reels 2 5. As mentioned before, any cow that appears in a winning pay line gets beamed up into a flying saucer.

• Jackpot Symbol

  This symbol awards the game’s highest payout, giving you 750 credits for 5 symbols, 150 credits for 4, and 30 credits for 3.

• Mixed Symbols

  The dog, grandma, grandpa, cowgirl, and man can combine in any manner to award you a win. 5 mixed symbols pay 500 credits, 4 pay 30 credits, and 3 pay 25 credits.

• Barn

  The barn pays 250 credits for 5 symbols, 50 for 4, and 20 for 3.

• Trailer

  The trailer pays 200 credits for 5 symbols, 40 for 4, and 15 for 3.

• Truck

  This symbol pays 150 credits for 5 symbols, 30 for 4, and 10 for 3.

• Chickens, Milk

  Both of these symbols pay 100 credits for 5 symbols, 20 for 4, and 5 for 3.

• Mailbox, Outhouse

  These symbols both pay 80 credits for 5 symbols, 20 for 4, and 5 for 3.

Earlier we mentioned that Invaders from the Planet Moolah offers a unique angle to the alien genre since cows are the invaders. But you’ll notice that most of the symbols fit the stereotypicalimages you’ll see in other alien slots.

This can really be seen in the mixed symbols, with grandma and grandpa looking like your average farm couple, the man holding a beer can and sporting a white tank top, and the cowgirl alsofitting into the rural theme.

We suppose that WMS included these farm characters along with barn, trailer, truck, and outhouse to add familiarity to an otherwise wacky theme. But it would be nice if they kept with theoriginality and added more unique symbols to support the cow alien theme.

As for the visual quality, it’s average at best. The background looks good, but the symbols lack the quality seen in many other WMS 5 reel slots.

If you want great graphics, other WMS games that you can try include Fire Queen and Crystal Forest.

Cascading reels are the big selling point to this game because they give you opportunities to keep forming winning combinations within the same turn.

WMS did a good job of going beyond cascading reels by including the flying saucers that zap/beam up winning symbols. These extra frills give Invaders from the Planet Moolah an added layer ofentertainment.

The one problem with cascading reels, though, is that they increase volatility on each turn. Sometimes you spin the reels 5 to 10 times with all 25 pay lines in play and get nothing.

The cascading reels help make up for these cold stretches, but it can be frustrating waiting for the multiple wins to come.

If you get four wins in a row during the same turn, you earn free spins. When this happens, a warning siren goes off while the game title is announced.

Your free spins begin as soon as you hit the red button. This takes you to another screen where the background is darker and the reels are green.

Other than these effects, the free spins are exactly the same as the main game. But it’s still nice that Invaders from the Planet Moolah offers some presentation before the free spins.

One frustrating aspect of these free spins is that they don’t come around very often. We used autospin for 200 spins at one point and didn’t get any free spins.

You must play all 25 pay lines because they’re fixed. But you do have flexibility with the coin denomination since you can change it from $0.01 to $5.00.

This makes the minimum bet $0.025 per spin and the max worth $125.00.

The nice thing about Invaders from the Planet Moolah’s betting options is that you can switch between QuickBet and Classic Panels. Just click the C or the QB buttons in the lower left hand cornerto change views.

The QuickBet Panel allows you to quickly adjust your bets with a sliding bar. The higher the bets, the more space there is between the betting increments.

Here are a couple examples: bets increase by $0.25 increments from $0.25 to $2.50. Bets increase by $12.50 increments from $70.00 to $125.00.

You can also click the Min of $0.25 and Max of $125.00 buttons on the side to quickly go from one extreme to another.

The Advantage to the QuickBet Panel is that it speeds up the betting process and lets you focus on the game. The downside is that it gives you far less control over your increments.

This is where the Classic Panel comes in handy because you can adjust your coin denomination by one cent every time. If you want to bet $0.10 on every pay line or $2.50 total, you just hit theplus or minus arrow to arrive here.

We only played the $0.01 coin size so it didn’t matter if we used the Classic or QuickBet panel. But we’d prefer the Classic Panel when varying bet sizes because of how much control it offers.

You can choose when you want to stop playing by clicking the Options button at the top of the screen.

One way you can do this is through your balance, selecting to stop playing when your bankroll increases or decreases by a specific amount. Here’s an example: we chose to stop playing when ourbankroll increased by $25.00 or when it decreased by $50.00.

You can also stop playing when you receive a single win worth a specific amount or when you’ve received any big win.

Like other slots companies, WMS has released several games that deal with aliens and/or outer space.

One of these games is based on the long running TV series Star Trek, which follows the voyages of the Starship Enterprise to strange planets.

Another slot is Space Invaders: Evolution, a skill based game that will hit Nevada casinos in the near future. While Space Invaders isn’t officially available yet, we did get to see a preview ofit at G2E 2015.

Below you can see how Invaders from the Planet Moolah compares to both of these slots.

The title of Invaders from the Planet Moolah suggests that this is another run of the mill alien slot. But it’s far from this thanks to the unique angle that the cows in flying saucers provide.

Rather than just creating another cascading reels/alien game, WMS has gone further by having the cows zap/beam up winning symbols. Not only do you get the cascading reels effect, but you’re alsoentertained in the process.

We also like the high degree of control that you have over betting options with the Classic Panel and QuickBet Panel views. The fact that you can set stop loss limits is another bonus.

We’d like to see better graphics from this game since the symbols are average. The symbols could also include more originality because almost every alien abduction slot includes farmers and farmanimals.