a software developer, released a clone of their game Mochimon, making it the first game to be reviewed. The studio’s massive output and the prevalence of clones, reskins, and remakes endowed Mochimon with an air of poetic inevitability. Let’s just say there wasn’t much of a shock factor. The mystery of Mochimon’s origin adds an extra layer of interest. Let’s just be up forward and say the precursor to this game was the gummy bear-themed candy slot Sugar Rush, which came out around six months before this one. Is Mochimon going to be better, worse, or the same as before?
How you answer that question visually depends on whether you’re more into cartoons or candy. One of the studio’s go-to inspirations for Mochimon was the Asian cultural aesthetic, and more especially the anime subgenre of that. To play Mochimon, you’ll need to locate a 7×7 game grid, which is covered in beautiful faces as its symbols, and attach it to the side of a van, like a roadside food business; an anime-style figure will bobble along in the background. Sugar Rush wasn’t the first game that sprang to mind; rather, it was a game called Wild Beach Party. Wild Beach Party was, like Mochimon before it, essentially an anime-themed reskin of Fruit Party 2. Instead of lounging in a tiny bikini this time, it seems like she’s dressed like a French maid. Stylish or obnoxious? Make up your own mind.
When you press the spin button, 49 symbols are randomly dropped onto the screen, and a winning combination is made when at least five identical symbols appear in adjacent positions. When you get a win, the symbols you just won’t be seeing will tumble off the screen and other symbols will fall into their place. Until no fresh cluster wins occur, the rewards for consecutive tumble wins will continue to accumulate on the same spin. All of this is made possible by a highly erratic mathematical model with a maximum return to player value of 96.5%, regardless of whether you play for free or for real money (bets range from 20 pence to £/€100 each paid spin).
The symbols are sprite-like characters of varying descriptions, making it difficult to categorize them. There are a total of seven in this game, with payouts ranging from 0.2x to 1x the wager for clusters of five symbols to 20x to 150x the wager for wins involving 15 or more symbols. As previously established, Mochimon lacks a wild symbol and only activates its tumble function after a winning spin.
Slot Machine Mochimon Symbols
The Multiplier Spots function is integrated with the rolling mechanism. This feature is playable throughout both the regular and bonus rounds. A winning symbol will burst to reveal its location on the game board. When a symbol bursts in the same location for a second time, a multiplier is applied to that point. Starting at x2, the multiplier increases by 1 each time a symbol explodes at that spot, all the way up to x128. Any winning combination that lands on top of the multiplier will be multiplied by its value. If a victory involves several multipliers, all of the multipliers’ values are summed together. In the regular mode, the multipliers stay in place until no more tumbles happen, at which point they are reset for the following spin.
No Risk Turns
Mochimon’s scatter is a treasure box, and getting 10, 12, 15, 20, or 30 free games depends on how many you land. During free games, the multipliers and highlighted cells stay there on the board until the feature ends. If players are lucky enough to get 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatter symbols while in the bonus round, they will be awarded with an extra 10, 12, 15, 20, or 30 free games. In some cases, players can pay 100 times their bet to unlock the bonus round immediately. To get 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 free spins after purchasing them, a player must land the scatter symbol.
Judgment of the Slot Mochimon
If you’re curious about the meaning of the name “Mochimon,” we did some research online and found that it refers to a level one Digimon (Digital Monster). Digimon is a Japanese property that began in the late ’90s and centers on digital pets, eventually expanding into other media including video games, television shows, and movies. Whether or not the developers of Mochimon the slot machine intended it, the name suggests a connection to the successful anime series. How will Toei Animation, Bandai, and Akiyoshi Hongo respond? OK, now we wait and see.
If any of the Digimon owners did intervene to quiet Mochimon, interested gamers still have Sugar Rush to turn to. When the visuals and sound are ignored, the gameplay and statistics are same. It’s not too bad of a situation, considering Sugar Rush and, by extension, Mochimon can piece together interesting narrative threads. Marked multiplier spots in the regular game give possibilities for some creative action, and their consistent quality in free spins may take them to the next level. In fact, proof exists of players achieving Sugar Rush’s win ceiling of 5,000x the stake, suggesting that, with the right combination of animals and multipliers, the same may happen in Mochimon.
It’s easy to understand why Pragmatic Play decided to copy Sugar Rush’s formula. One might say that occasionally the studio seems determined, like some kind of extreme slot eco-warrior, to repurpose every game it has ever produced. While the novelty of the original is understandably diminished in this anime reimagining, the highly replayable gaming that Sugar Rush introduced is all here and as lively as ever.