New Alien Themed Slots, ET Lost Socks, from Evoplay

Evoplay launches wacky new E.T. Lost Socks Slot.

Evoplay Entertainment may not have the largest portfolio of online slots games, but their development crew certainly isn’t lacking in the creativity department. They’ve put out all the usual themes, like oriental charms, sci-fi fantasy, sports and fruit slots. But they’ve also delivered some rather zany titles that anyone with a sense of humor can appreciate.

Today’s release is a new alien themed slots game called E.T. Lost Socks. Not the original E.T. from the Steven Spielberg classic, mind you. More like a group of ‘extras’ from the Pixar hit, Monsters, Inc. Otherwise, the title pretty much says it all. These colorful extraterrestrial creatures are on a mission to find all their equally colorful lost socks.

E.T. Lost Socks Slot Review

As with so many Evoplay online slots, this one comes with the good and the bad. Thematically and graphically, it’s a rip-roaring success. I love all the cute little critters Evoplay built into the game, and the concept behind the multi-color, multi-functional free spins.

However, the game can get twitchy on any under-equipped desktop or mobile device. Worse, it’s blatantly obvious (at least in my experience) the design team altered the appearance of special symbols to reduce the profitability of free spins. More on that in a moment… let’s take a closer look under the hood of ET Lost Socks.

Symbols & Base Game Play

There are 10 symbols to look out for in this 5×3 reel, 21 payline game. They include four extraterrestrials, valued highest to lowest by color; red, blue, green and purple. Next are four color-matching space gems. The last two are the Wild Sock and the Alien Scatter.

Wild socks do nothing special—just the usual substitution for all other standard symbols. The scatter will deliver scatter pays of 1x to 50x the total bet for 2 to 5 appearing on the reels at once. Additionally, if 3+ scatters appear, 10 free spins are awarded, which brings us to…

Extraterrestrial Free Spins

Each of the four alien creatures awards a different feature during free spins. Whenever 3+ scatters appear, one color alien is randomly chosen. The possible features include:

Purple Alien Shifting Wilds: Players receive 10 free spins. Whenever a wild appears, a free re-spin triggers. The wild then shifts upward one position. Re-spins continue until no more wilds are present.

Green Alien Expanding Wilds: Player receives 10 free spins. Whenever a wild symbol appears, it expands to cover the whole reel.

Blue Alien Replacement Wilds: Player receives 10 free spins. Every alien that appears on the reels, of any color, will be replaced with a wild.

Red Alien Sticky Wilds: Player receives 10 free spins. Every wild that appears will be sticky, remaining in place until the free games are over.

The Bad News…

Here’s what turned me off from this game. I played it for a bit, fully enjoying myself at first, then the free spins hit. First I got the blue alien, where all extraterrestrial symbols turn into wilds. The description sounds great, but the actual experience was not.

All through the base game, aliens were plentiful. I’d say they covered about 30-35% of the reels. During this free spins feature, they were almost nonexistent! I was lucky to land a single alien on about half the spins.

The same thing happened when I struck the red alien free spins. Only two wild socks appeared; one on spin 4 and another on spin 8. Needless to say, it was very disappointing…

Evoplay boasts a 96.5% RTP on its E.T. Lost Socks Slot. Maybe I just had some really unlucky free spin runs? Whatever the case, I don’t think I’ll be playing this one again. I got a lot more entertainment out of Microgaming’s skill-based alien themed slots game, Max Damage and the Alien Attack (pictured right). If you enjoy old-style shooter arcades like Gallaga, give that one a try instead.