True Grit Redemption 2 review

Step 1

Spins 1 to 3. Nothing.

Hunter: Three. That is not a drought, that is a warm up.

Grinder: It is three euros.

Skeptic: Watch what the screen does on a losing spin. Nothing. No sound, no animation, no acknowledgement. It only speaks when it wants something.

Step 2

Spin 4. Stake EUR 1.00. Return EUR 0.05. The screen says TOTAL WIN.

Hunter: Nice.

Grinder: You bet one euro.

Hunter: Nice.

Skeptic: A ninety five percent loss, in gold, at the same size and the same sound as a real win. Somebody chose that.

Step 3

The buy panel. Ten buttons, EUR 1.50 to EUR 1,869 at a EUR 1 stake.

Hunter: Reckoning is only sixty six. That is the one.

Grinder: Sixty six euros is sixty six spins.

Skeptic: All ten return less than the button you already have. The worst of them, Vengeance at 95.94%, is in the top row where your eye lands first.

Step 4

Spin 23. Reckoning Spins triggers on its own. Seven spins awarded.

Hunter: TWENTY THREE SPINS.

Grinder: The published average is 246.

Hunter: TWENTY THREE.

Skeptic: One trigger tells you nothing about 246. It tells you a great deal about how you will remember this game.

Step 5

Bonus spin 6 of 7. Multiplier counter at 14X. Every position on the grid badged.

Hunter: I have stopped reading the symbols. I am reading the badges.

Grinder: EUR 57.55 on the board.

Skeptic: That is the design working. You stop reading the game and start reading the number going up.

Step 6

Extra Spin offer. Multiplier counter at 14X.

EUR 32 for one more spin. You are holding EUR 57.55. Yes or no?

Hunter: Obviously. Fourteen X. You do not walk away at fourteen X.

Grinder: It is fifty six percent of everything you are holding.

Skeptic: Do not.

Hunter: It is only thirty two.

Skeptic: Their own rules document says the optimal play is to decline. Their document, not mine.

Hunter: Their document is not up fourteen X.

Grinder: Neither are you. The counter is.

“Optimal return to player is achieved by not choosing an Extra Spin.” Nolimit City, True Grit Redemption 2 rules screen

We pressed no.

Step 7

EUR 57.55 collected. Eight spins later, EUR 4.35 of it gone.

Hunter: Still the best thing that happened all day.

Grinder: You gave back eight percent of it in under a minute, in silence.

Skeptic: The spins after a win are the quietest the game ever gets. That is also a choice.

The Hunter

9/10 on the chase

Judges a game by the trigger. High tolerance for drought, no patience for base game.

Twenty eight spins. One trigger. Fifty seven times my money back. I would do that again right now and so would you.

Here is what the Grinder will not tell you: the dead spins are not the game. The dead spins are the queue. You are standing in line for a wanted poster that fills up with bullet holes while a multiplier counter climbs to 14X and a man called Austin dies on screen. That is what you came for. Four minutes of 10 and J and Q turning over is the ticket price, not the show.

And this one pays the queue off properly. 34,000x at the top, one in twenty one million. That is the correct number for a top prize. A ceiling you could plausibly reach is not a ceiling worth walking toward.

The bonus does the one thing I actually want, which is escalate. You go in at 1X. By the last spin every single position on the grid is wearing a multiplier badge and the counter is at 14X and you have stopped reading the symbols entirely. Then it offers you one more spin for thirty two euros and your hand is already moving.

The splash screen before the game even loads has a slide called THE HUNTER. They know exactly who they built this for.

Base game: boring, and correctly so. Bonus: outstanding. Two of the three of us are about to tell you this game is a problem. They are describing the queue. I am describing the show.

The Grinder

EUR 246 a look

Judges a game by entertainment per euro. Cares how long fifty euros actually lasts.

The Hunter got the feature on spin twenty three. Lucky. The published number is one in two hundred and forty six.

So let us do the only sum that matters here. At one euro a spin, fifty euros buys you fifty spins. The chance that fifty spins contains a bonus is eighteen percent. To get yourself to a coin flip you need a hundred and seventy spins, so a hundred and seventy euros staked, for a fifty fifty shot at seeing the feature once.

That is not a slot. That is a deposit with a story attached.

Meanwhile, what the base game actually does to a balance. It pays about every four spins, which sounds generous until you see what it pays. Of the returns I watched, three of them were five cents, seventy five cents and ten cents on a one euro bet. Those are losses. The game prints them in gold.

After the bonus paid, I sat through eight more spins and gave back four euros thirty five. Under a minute. In silence, because losing spins get no screen time at all.

Want the top prize? One in twenty one million. At five seconds a spin, playing continuously, that is three years and four months of uninterrupted spinning.

The art is good. I want to be very clear that the art is extremely good. I am not paying two hundred and forty six euros a look at it.

The Skeptic

8/10 on how hard it hunts you

Does not care whether it is fun. Cares what it is doing while you are having fun.

Six things, all observed in one sitting.

One. Three of the spins I watched returned less than the stake, and all three were announced as TOTAL WIN in gold, at the same point size, with the same sound, as the one that actually paid. Five cents on a one euro bet is a ninety five percent loss. It is typeset as a victory.

Two. There is a panel with ten buttons on it. Every single one returns less than doing nothing. Base game is 96.07%. The cheapest booster is 96.03%, the most expensive is 96.00%, and the worst button in the entire game, Vengeance Spins at 95.94%, sits in the top row where your eye lands first. Nolimit publishes all of these figures, which is more than most studios do. They publish them in a panel laid out like a shop.

Three. The Extra Spin. It appeared with one spin left, while I was holding EUR 57.55, with the multiplier at 14X, and it asked for EUR 32.00. Fifty six percent of everything I had. YES on the left, in the primary reading position, the same size and weight as NO. Nolimit's own rules say, and this is a direct quote, optimal return to player is achieved by not choosing an Extra Spin. The game tells you not to press it, then puts it in front of you at the single moment in the session when you feel richest.

Four. The confirmation dialog for a feature buy carries a Don't show again checkbox. One click and the friction is gone permanently.

Five. Two taps from the spin button there is a panel called Nolimit Winners: other people's top wins, with dates, with a replay button on every row. The top entry when I looked was dated the previous day. A one in twenty one million outcome, presented to you as something that happened to someone yesterday, with video. There is a Current game tab and an All games tab, so you can browse the portfolio's hall of fame without leaving the reels.

Six. On losing spins the grid is still covered in multiplier badges. 2X, 4X, 9X, sitting on positions that paid nothing at all. The spin failed. The screen is decorated like it nearly did not.

None of this is illegal and almost all of it is disclosed. That is the point. It is disclosed in a rules screen and engineered into the interface, and the interface is the thing people actually read.