NUUKD

Nuukd: Slot Overview

'If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face'; these days, instead of a totalitarian government doing the stamping as George Orwell referred to, many believe it will be AI that rises up and wipes us out. Software provider NetEnt recently made a bleak prediction of an AI-dominated future in Aftermath, and now rival Shady Lady goes one step further in its slot Nuukd, which sees the extinguishment of the human race in a world where AI won. However, this doesn't mean life is over, just that it evolved, and it continues in a cycle of mystery canisters, meter-charging babydrills, and coin wins, showing how the never-ending need for consumption, accumulation, and resource extraction continues to be craved by machines as it was with us humies.

Nuukd takes place 'in a land they once called green', ruled by an entity called Mother, who lies beneath the ice, processing a strange substance through tubes connected to her metallic nipples, willing her children to dig, dig, dig, for so-called green gold. Babydrills are what the minions use to dig, and these come in handy for players, as will soon be made clear. What's also clear is that entering Nuukd's game world means suspending disbelief, while also accepting that this sort of scenario could one day be our planet's reality. On a side note, when asking AI if it will take over the world one day, the answer was oddly and unsettlingly cagey.

A 5x6 gaming grid sits in the middle of the screen, evaluating winning combinations left to right along 25 winlines. Hit spin, and prepare for possible motion sickness as symbols spin upwards rather than the customary downward direction. Players may stake $/€0.10 to $/€50 per spin, or if that's not fast or exciting enough, the Store is stacked with buy options. Shady Lady has classified the math model as highly volatile, with 96.1% as the max return value.

The pay symbols are blocks of ice depicting a communication device, a mask, a container, a shoe, and four character symbols. Character symbols award 2.5x-15x for 5 OAK, while the rest pay 0.5x-1.2x for a 5-of-a-kind hit. Wild symbols substitute for all paying symbols and have the same value as the top character pay.

Nuukd: Slot Features

Nuukd drops bombs in the form of mystery reveal canisters, babydrills, the Mother Meter, bonus rounds, super bonus rounds, and various feature buys.

Mystery Reveal Canisters

Canisters can land in the base game and free spins. Each canister starts at the lowest level. When the reels stop, each canister reveals the same regular symbol or Laundry Machines. The higher the level, the better the symbol. At the top level, every canister becomes a Laundry Machine or a wild. When canisters turn into Laundry Machines, each one awards a coin worth 1x to 20,000x.

Babydrills & The Mother Meter

Babydrills can land on any reel, one per reel at the most. Babydrills dig down their reel, collecting a charge for the Mother Meter from each position below it. Drilled positions then turn into mystery reveal canisters. Filling the Mother Meter achieves tiers, and each tier reached triggers Mother's favours. The more tiers reached, the more favours players get, and the stronger they are.

• Multiplier - Adds multipliers to random mystery reveal canisters to boost any win passing through them, or are applied to coin wins.
• Spreader - Adds more mystery reveal canisters.
• Canister Upgrader - Raises the canisters' level towards the top coins or wilds level.
• Extra Spin - Awards extra free spins in the bonus round.

Bonus & Super Bonus

Landing 3 scatters triggers 6 free spins in the bonus round, or 4 scatters trigger 10 free spins in the super bonus. Bonus rounds play like the base game but with extra babydrills present on the reels. The Mother Meter's charge carries over between spins for the whole round. In the super bonus, an extra tier is awarded whenever the Mother Meter is filled (a minimum of two boosters are always awarded).

The Store

For 1.5x, the Bonus Boost increases the chance of triggering the bonus by 32%, or for 5x, the Big Bonus Boost increases the chance by 476%. The Babydrill Booster costs 31x to guarantee a babydrill on each spin. Costing 1,990x, the Max Win Coin buys a spin where Laundry Machines are revealed with a greatly increased chance of landing the 20,000x coin.

Players are able to buy the bonus round, the super bonus, the Bronze, the Silver, or the Gold Bonus for 83x, 488x, 129x, 345x, or 1,594x the bet, respectively. Highlight Reels present the top 3 results from 100, 300, or 500 spins for 82x, 210x, or 324x the bet. The remaining buys are Loot Boxes - The Rare Loot Box, Epic Loot Box, Legendary Loot Box, or Vault Loot Box for 186x, 344x, 570x, or 1,165x the stake.

Nuukd: Slot Verdict

Few designers create the weird, wonderful worlds Shady Lady does, and Nuukd is another odd one. It's not as temple scratchingly weird as Orphan Organ, but the scary thing about Nuukd is that it projects a future which could actually one day come to pass, turning the existential shiver of fear into a full-on emotional gut punch. Predicting the future might be fraught with uncertainty, but there is a possibility, however large or small, that the future could look something like the dystopian freak-out Shady Lady has created in Nuukd. Ah well, the future is a long way off, right? So, who really cares about the species' long-term survival if humanity's current organic overlords can use AI to cut corners and increase corporate profits? Hmm, we've already lost, haven't we…?

From a gameplay perspective, Nuukd's mystery symbol stacks and reveals gave off Razor Shark vibes, though the effect as a whole was quite different to Push Gaming's version. Evolved is one way of putting it; hard work is another. It felt at times like a significant portion of the RTP is reserved for major reveal moments, or even the more expensive buys, as there were a lot of dead spins to battle through till anything of importance happened. There is massive potential here for something special to occur, up to a cap of 20,000x, but base game, free spins, and even the top buy results were often very modest, and best outcomes were often provided by coin wins, though decent line wins did occur. For a while it felt like the game needed a lot of winding up to really get anywhere. Then again, stacks of canisters could land from nowhere, reveal the same pay symbol (or coins), and just like that Nuukd was back. Demoing the more expensive bonus buys may help show what Nuukd can do when its components get a chance to flex, and those moments can be impressive, with babydrills feeding the Meter and triggering boosters to squeeze every last drop of green out of the canisters.

Nuukd might not be the ideal game for the faint-hearted, those that lack patience, or gamblers looking for a regular spin and (hopefully) win. There are big potential rewards here for lucky gamblers to be sure, and the upgrading, multiplying, and spreading canisters process builds suspense, but the battle to get to the better moments could be tough. All in all though, Nuukd is a creative game, where Shady Lady has created an interesting world and then populated it with an equally interesting set of features which nod to the past while pushing inexorably onwards into a bleak, machine-owned future.