Rusty & Curly: Slot Overview
Western slots, there's a lot of them, huh? Software providers are tempted west on a regular basis to see what they can add to the genre. Usually, it's a seriously minded game set in a rickety one-horse town where the tumbleweeds blowing through the streets are only outnumbered by the amount of bullets flying about the place. It's a slot category full of options, some great, some less so. Making a break from the norm, is Hacksaw Gaming's entry into the genre, Rusty & Curly. In this humorous take on cowboys, desperadoes, and whatnot, two unlikely leads are accompanied by their trusty animals, Crispy & Chewy, in a sort of Dork Unit meets The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly knee slapper.
Which one is Rusty, and which one is Curly? Good question, and at a guess, Curly is the one standing to the left of the reels on account of the curlier hair, while Rusty is the slim-limbed, pot-bellied, dad-bod dude on the right. Could be wrong, apologies Rusty & Curly, if we are. The two characters are just chilling out in the middle of nowhere through the roads of Dorkville, one trying to look bow-legged menacing, the other one possessing the sort of glazed expression one might form if the creator of the universe had just downloaded the meaning of everything into their mind but their brain lacks the processing power or RAM to compute all the data. A couple of unlikely heroes, in other words, who set a humorous tone before launching into the action.
Between the two 'funslingers', as the game info calls them, is Rusty & Curly's 5-reel, 4-row gaming panel. It has 14 paylines, that award wins when 3 to 5 matching symbols land along them, beginning from the leftmost reel. On the default RTP model, players can theoretically expect a return value of 96.29%, though some of the feature buys affect this figure. With a medium volatile math model, rated as 3 out of 5 by the Hacksaw team, players are able to select stakes from 10 c per spin, up to $/€100 at the most.
Jack to Ace card ranks are Rusty & Curly's low pay symbols, shooting off wins of 1 times the bet when landing a line of 5 identical royals. Then there's a skull, a hat, a bottle, a horseshoe, and a sheriff's badge as the highs, worth 3 to 10 times the bet for a 5 OAK winning line. Wild Posters are present on all reels, substituting any regular pay symbol and worth 10x the bet for a line of 5 of them.
Rusty & Curly: Slot Features
Rusty & Curly makes excellent use of the theme and characters to bring life to its features, which include Wild Poster symbols, leading to respins and multipliers, a Stick To The Plan! bonus, which boosts the base game mechanics, while Who Shot The Sheriff? brings the gang together for a multi-cycle collect and payout experience.
Almost Sticky Wild Posters
Wild Posters can land with hearts, a multiplier, or both. They stay on the reels and grant respins as long as at least 1 heart remains. Each Wild Poster can have up to 3 hearts, and a heart is lost per respin. When no hearts remain, the Wild Poster is removed on the next respin. Wild Posters may land with multipliers of x2 to x10. During respins, any landed FS scatter symbols are collected on the progress bar above the reels.
Stick to the Plan! Bonus
Hitting 3 FS scatter symbols in the base game activates 6 free Stick to the Plan! spins. This bonus round increases the chance Wild Posters land with a greater number of hearts and bigger multipliers where the value can now be x2 to x100. While there is at least 1 Wild Poster on the reels with 1 heart or more, players are given respins which do not count towards the awarded free spins. FS scatters do not land during this feature.
Who Shot The Sheriff? Bonus
When 4 FS scatters hit in the base game, players get 12 free Who Shot The Sheriff? spins divided into 3 Cycles. One Cycle consists of 1 Collect Phase spin and 3 Payout Phase spins. In the Collect Phase, Rusty, Curly, or both land and expand to a wild reel on a random reel. They shoot 1 to 6 times at the multipliers on the grid. The total value of the multipliers they shoot at is added to the wild reel for the Payout Phase. Possible multiplier values range from x1 to x200.
The Payout Phase has 3 spins with paying symbols. The Rusty & Curly wild reels are sticky, holding the multipliers from the Collect Phase. After 3 Payout Phase spins, the game goes back to the Collect Phase again. During the Payout Phase, Crispy & Chewy symbols may land and expand to wild reels but do not have multipliers. They are not sticky, either. Landing 3 FS symbols in the feature awards +1 extra Cycle, landing 4 FS symbols awards +2 extra Cycles.
Bonus Buy
From the bonus buy menu, players can choose different ways they'd like to take Rusty & Curly on. All are highly volatile, except Stick-Up FeatureSpins, which are medium.
- BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 3x the bet, each spin is 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. (RTP 96.4%)
- The Stick-Up FeatureSpins – 50x the bet, each spin guarantees at least 5 Wild Poster symbols. (RTP 96.29%)
- Stick To The Plan! Bonus – 100x the bet (RTP 96.29%).
- Who Shot The Sheriff? Bonus – 300x the bet (RTP 96.41%).
Rusty & Curly: Slot Verdict
Hey, what can you expect from a game which puts this in one of its free spins round descriptions: 'Come on down to Bonus Town, where the grass is dead and the girls are gritty'? A few rib ticklers that's what, and Hacksaw Gaming has crafted a slot packed with humorous parts. Cast your mind back to Wanted Dead or a Wild – could Rusty & Curly be any more atmospherically different? One of the funnier parts was trying to imagine either Rusty or Curly ever shooting a sheriff before concluding the only way this would likely happen is if one of them accidentally dropped their six shooter on the ground, firing a bullet that ricocheted off the bell in the bell tower, angling downwards into the lawman's office and sadly piercing him through the breast.
Hacksaw is Hacksaw, though, so the math in Rusty & Curly is no joke. The game has numerous ways it can tantalise, taunt, and, when lucky, reward. What's cool is how each gameplay element is intricately linked to the theme, such as the Wild Poster almost sticky wilds and the shooting of multiplier values by Rusty & Curly wild reels in phase 1 of the Who Shot THe Sheriff? bonus. That bonus is one of Rusty & Curly's main highlights. It's not the first time Hacksaw Gaming has done a collect and payout multi-phase bonus. Alpha Eagle had one, for example. But not like Rusty & Curly's, and as you might expect, Who Shot The Sherrif? can end up a do-or-die Hacksaw Gaming special. Potentially ace if Rusty & Curly both hit and shoot up a storm of multipliers, sad face when the opposite occurs.
Both of Rusty & Curly's bonus rounds are capable of hitting the 10,000x win cap, but the base game apparently is not. This provides even more incentive to trigger (or buy) the bonus rounds, in addition to experiencing the idiosyncratic gameplay they offer, though more so Who Shot The Sheriff?, really, in a uniquely designed Western slot.
