Time Warp Guardian

The stakes are high in Playson’s latest release: the game is played to protect time and space from danger, and win big in the process. With five reels, abundant wilds, 243 ways to win, and delightful thematic and visual content, it’s clear that the design time took extra care to build an intricate game, filled with subtle differences between difference phases of gameplay. Time Warp Guardian makes a case for itself as Playson’s best title yet.

Theme

This game has a much more involved narrative than most online slots. The titular guardian, a feminine version of Mega-Man with curves and a pixie cut, stands at the side of the slot reels, watching and commenting on the action. When wilds unlock time warps, the avatar is pulled into the spinning portal, transported along with the user into the new setting. In keeping with the time warp theme, gaming symbols include robotic hands, futuristic 3-D maps, mysterious tentacles, the main character’s charming face, and stone tablet wilds, marked with indications of the time periods to which they can whisk the user away. There are also lower-value symbols, ten through ace, with which to make winning combinations.

Though the base game seems set in the near future, with wide streets and shops to be seen, bonus rounds are set in three other eras of time. The Jurassic Period, replete with dinosaurs and lush greenery and the Antique Period (surely meant to evoke the Age of Antiquity. A few antique shops stock furniture from the Greco-Roman eras. Perhaps the design team had to deal with a copyright issue), with Hellenistic architecture, and the Distant Future, with fanciful futuristic architecture that looks equally Mega Man-inspired. Beautiful animation connects these time periods to the base game, for a sophisticated user experience well above what the average online slot has to offer.

Betting Options and Features

Bet sizes range from .20 up to 200 times the play currency in Time Warp Guardian, allowing access to bankrolls of all different sizes. The user interface is direct and designed with elegance and simplicity in mind, making play downright enjoyable. While game description boasts of 243 ways to win, payline information is less transparent than one might prefer, so it’s not terribly easy to get an accurate sense of how often base gameplay translates into wins. With that said, the ways to trigger bonuses are both straightforward and original.

Stone tablets wild symbols can appear on reels one and five. When two wilds appear on the same reel, the so-called “Sticky Reel” feature is enabled – those wilds remain in place while unsuccessfully-spun reels spin again, allowing for big wins and the first step towards free spin bonuses, where the largest profits can be won.

It’s when four wilds appear on the reels that things really begin to get interesting. Five free spins are triggered, summoning a new screen with two separate three-by-three reels appearing across the screen from one-another. Only high-value symbols appear on these reels, which helps propel big wins, but there’s another unique feature within this mini-game: remember how the two miniaturized sets of reels sit facing each other? Well, when the same tile appears in mirrored position on the twin reels, both symbols turn into wilds, unlocking potentially major win bonuses.

Finally, it’s within this free spin mini game that the Time Warps after which the game is named can appear. It is the only part of play in which Era Hologram game symbols appear – these are smaller symbols made of bright blue light, appearing in the shape of the time above periods. When two matching Era Hologram symbols appear on the mini-reels, our leading lady avatar is pulled into the time warp, along with the user, and the most lucrative part of the game begins.

Each historical era bonus round is built with unique features, though big wins are all but guaranteed in all three, and all three use the same five-reel structure as the base game. In the Jurassic Era game, the user is given eight spins wherein wilds multiply though the “Wild-Hunting” feature. If and when a wild appears on one of the outer reels, it will also appear in the same line of the adjacent reel while the other reels spin again, then do so again with the wild on the same line of three adjacent reels. With three guaranteed wilds, big wins are sure to follow. In Antique Era, ten free spins are awarded, with between one and three wild symbols generating at random during each spin. Lastly, in the Distant Future, the player receives 12 free spins, and represents the player’s best opportunity to rack up the winnings. While there are still five reels, the middle reel is fixed on a wild in the central position, which the second and fourth reels always mirror each other: this means that reels two, three, and four always match in the middle line. This is where players can see their bankroll grow by leaps and bounds.

Our Take

With Time Warp Guardian, Playson has designed a gorgeous slot with enough variety of gameplay to keep users coming back for more. Though a bit more transparency with regards to paylines would be appreciated, the overall game experience is extraordinarily enjoyable. It is one slot not to be missed.