Crank It Up: Slot Overview

Here’s a quick and totally unscientific quiz. If you walked into a party with the music blasting, would you a) politely ask the host to turn it down, or b) jump on the stereo and crank it up even more? If you picked A, congrats—you’re officially old, over it, and cranky, while the B crowd is officially young, hip, and with it. None of that is meant seriously, of course, but for gamblers who are young, hip, and with it (or who want to act like they are), let’s dive into Pragmatic Play’s louder-than-loud online slot, Crank It Up.

As with beauty, “cool” is in the eye of the beholder, and the modern-day Fonzi hanging out on the right side of Crank It Up’s screen is, depending on your perspective, either a genuine trendsetter or a complete doofis. Luckily, he doesn’t affect the gameplay at all—he’s just there to make things look better, or worse, or whatever you decide. The soundtrack may be a taste you have to grow into as well. Some players will want to reach for the volume controls and turn the funky beats up, while others will be hunting for the mute button. It’s clearly meant in good fun, but when businesses try too hard to be “hip,” it can get a bit cringey. If Crank It Up gives you that vibe, well… let’s roll with it for now.

Front and centre is a 5-reel, 3-row grid that pays standard wins left to right from the leftmost reel across its 20 paylines. Something about the styling, colours, and overall layout reminded us of Pragmatic Play’s slot, Hellvis Wild, but that’s beside the point. To get things going, players can choose a stake from 20 cents up to a high of $/€240 per spin, and there’s also a feature buy for anyone wanting to bypass the dry-toast base game. With high volatility, Crank It Up comes with a default RTP of 95.95%, which sits a touch lower than what Pragmatic Play often delivers.

Stylish J-A card symbols make up the low pays, handing out 2.5 to 5 times the bet for landing 5 OAK. Above them are shutter shades, headphones, footwear, and a microphone as the premium symbols, paying 15 to 30 times the bet for 5 OAK. Then there’s the ghetto blaster wild symbol, which shows up on reels 2, 3, and 4. Wilds substitute for every symbol except the scatter.

Crank It Up: Slot Features

There’s basically nothing happening in the base game worth reporting, so we’ll jump straight into the free spins feature. It activates when 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols land, awarding 10, 15 or 20 free spins, respectively. During free spins, every time a wild symbol lands, it highlights that position. If a wild lands on a position that’s already highlighted, the multiplier increases on that spot in the following sequence – x2, x3, x5, then x10.

Once the free spins are finished, players receive 3 additional special spins. In these special spins, all highlighted positions transform into sticky wilds, keeping the multiplier achieved on each spot during the standard free spins phase. No new wild symbols can land during the special free spins. Any multiplier applies to all winning combinations that run through it. If a win passes through more than one multiplier, the multipliers add together. Finally, landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters during the normal free spins portion grants an extra +10, +15, or +20 free spins, respectively.

Buy Free Spins

Because the base game is fairly underwhelming, players can purchase entry to the free spins feature, which is triggered randomly on a spin by 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols for 80 times the bet. The RTP when buying free spins is 96.03%.

Crank It Up: Slot Verdict

Whether you see it as a self-aware cringe fest or a tongue-in-cheek poke at trends and fashion, Crank It Up feels like a slot with two different identities. The gap between its repetitive, featureless base game and its frame-fuelled free spins is huge. Things get even more specific because it’s the final 3 additional special spins where Crank It Up really gets the chance to, well, crank it up. How much it “cranks” depends heavily on how many framed positions you’ve built and how many of them have multipliers. Stack enough of them and you could be in for a great time. Miss out, and the prospect of grinding back through the low-energy base game again can be a real buzzkill.

Crank It Up definitely has flashes of fun, and players who like the highlighted positions plus end-of-feature special spins idea may want to check out Relax Gaming’s slot Wild Chapo. Like Crank It Up, Wild Chapo gradually builds overlays on the screen—bombs in that case—then on the last spin, wilds and wilds with multipliers flood the reels to stir up chaos. In Wild Chapo, the multipliers multiply each other rather than adding, which makes the overall experience far more explosive than Crank It Up across all stages. Pragmatic Play’s Sugar Rush 1000 is another title built around highlighted positions and climbing multipliers, and it’s one that has done well in the market while also being far more volatile.

One clear sign that Crank It Up can actually deliver, sorry, we’ll stop leaning on that word, is its 10,000x the stake win cap. You’ll likely want a screen packed with framed positions going into the special spins if you’re aiming for the cap, but it does seem technically achievable for anyone willing to sit through Crank It Up’s less exciting stretches to reach its more promising moments.