Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Like another reviewer indicated, I, too, play the Facebook version of Jackpot Party and was ecstatic to see PhantomEFX offering a port that works with first generation Kindles. I've been disappointed that some new games only work with the Kindle HD, so I excitedly downloaded and installed hoping to see that everything worked very similarly. It does! It will pull in your account data from your Facebook account so if you have $353.00 in credits on Facebook, you'll have the same amount in the Kindle version of the game and vice versa. Jackpot Party (JP) uses real slot machines found in real casinos from the company WMS Slots. The WMS brand of slots are some of my favorites and look and play great. Every machine in JP is very close, although not perfect (will get to that shortly), to the experience you'll find in the same slot machine to be found in real world casinos. Play in JP begins with access to only one slot, Zeus II, featuring the Super Respin feature: if a whole column of Zeus symbols land in the first reel, then they lock and the game respins twice for free to try and match as many wild and Zeus symbols. The more Zeus and wild symbols, the higher the payout. Every spin racks up experience points (XP) and when you've accumulated enough XP your player level will increase. Every five levels you unlock one new slot. You can choose from slot machines banded in groups of three: Level 1: Zeus II machine is unlocked at start Level 5, 10: Choose to unlock from two other WMS Slot machines: Brazilian Beauty, Invaders From Planet Moolah Level 15, 20, 25: Jungle Wild, Reel Rich Devil, Fortunes of the Carribean Level 30, 35, 40: Rome & Egypt, Buffalo Spirit, Super Jackpot Party And so on, with new machines available continuing to be available with every five additional levels. The Kindle version only shows slots up to level 75, but in the Facebook game it goes up to 135, so it stands to reason the two will be synced at some point down the road, opening up the possibility for expansion even further. The amount of experience required to level increases with each new level, similar to MMORPG, so it will take new players a long time to level up, unless they throw down real $$ to buy credits OR are extremely lucky. As for free play, you get some credits every four hours just for logging in and playing and there is a mega bonus that pays up to 10x credits (you have to guess which magic box has a multiplier of 3x, 6x, or 10x). You can also earn free credits by referring and gifting your friends inside the game. Still, there are limits imposed on only one gift per day per friend, so if you don't hit some bonus games on the slots or big payouts your credits will dwindle fast. I've been playing casually for a year or so through Facebook and am only level 33. The highest level any of my friends have is 88, so it takes awhile. There is no requirement to use real $$ to buy credits, but for those who want to power level, expect to break out the plastic. Those who do want to spend real money will find there are deals from time to time to buy large amount of credits for anywhere from $5 up to $25 USD+. For those who don't want to level to unlock new slots to play there are three additional 'bonus' slots can be unlocked by paying real $$. Every couple days the game will offer a 24 hour challenge quest. If you amass 2,000 (or something like that) in payouts within a 24 hour period, a slot will unlock for one day of play. As I hinted at earlier, the machines are not 100% accurate to the WMS Slots in the casino, but the differences are cosmetic, at best. For example, in the Money Burst machine Fortunes of the Carribean, the bonus game has a whale full reel instead of the wild symbols (both function the same gameplay-wise, however). There is also a slower cycling of the last of four reels locking to get a bonus. Only those who play the real WMS Slots will notice these kind of things. The sounds are pretty much dead on. The payout percentages? Aye, here comes the conspiracy theory, totally not based on any fact. I think these machines are set to payback worse than their real casino counterparts. I have no idea if it's accurate or not, but you can literally pound away thousands of credits receiving lousy payouts at higher denomination bets and get no decent hits and then lower your bet and get multiple decent payouts. If I had to guess at an overall payout--and this is purely a guess--I'd say the payback percentage is worse than 80%. Yes, at times, you might get 300%+, but over time the company is trying to get you buy credits with real money, so having the machines payback at closer to 92-97%+ wouldn't seem to be congruent with that amount of realism. Again, this is a guess, your 'luck' might fare much better than mine. If you want to play authentic WMS slot machines there is no other game on Kindle that allows this as of this writing. It's a nice way to sample their slots without being required to gamble with real money. Graphics, sounds, gameplay, fun factor, all a 4-star experience. Recommended.