Mad Cabs: Slot Overview

Do you miss the glory days of playing Crazy Taxi on your Playstation 2? If so, Mad Cabs from software developer Iron Dog Studio could be right up your street. Mad Cabs is all about paid transport in its many guises, and it throws in mechanics like Call a Noober, which expands pay symbols, alongside free spins and a bonus buy feature.

As the Internet will tell you, the term ‘cab’ is said to come from ‘cabriolet’—a one-horse, two-wheeled carriage that used to be hired in places like Paris and London. The shortened word stuck and is now commonly used for taxis and other hired rides. Mad Cabs does feature taxis, but you’ll also spot tuk-tuks and limos dotted around the grid. The action takes place downtown on an empty street with no people and no traffic, which isn’t exactly prime time for flagging down a ride. Adding to the “mad” vibe is a lively rock soundtrack that shifts toward pop punk in free spins; even if it doesn’t go quite as wild as the creators may have intended, it still feels distinct, and that counts for something.

Looking at the layout, the game uses 5 reels with 4 symbols on each reel, and it runs on 20 paylines. In the lower-right corner, a coin icon lets players choose a stake from 20 p/c to $/€50 per spin, and there are three buy features available too. Built on a medium-high volatile math model, Mad Cabs comes with a default RTP of 95.06%, though this changes when purchasing free spins.

Mad Cabs includes nine standard pay symbols, with line wins formed when matching symbols land from the left side across consecutive reels. The five lower-value symbols are racing-themed 10 to A card ranks, paying 1 to 2 times the bet for a 5 symbol win, while the premium symbols are a Tuk-Tuk, a Black Cab, a Yellow Taxi, and a Limo. Landing a 5 OAK premium combo pays 10 to 125 times the stake. Flaming wilds can also appear on all reels, substituting for all non-special symbols. When wilds create wins on their own, they pay the same as the top Limo symbol.

Mad Cabs: Slot Features

If you’re looking to boost the win potential—or at least act like you’re trying to grab a ride—Mad Cabs offers the Call a Noober extra, free spins, and bonus buys.

Call a Noober

In the base game, landing at least 2 different sets of Mad Cab symbols (premium car symbols) that could form a win activates Call a Noober. A set is made up of 3 or more Tuk-Tuks, Black Cabs, Yellow Cabs, or 2+ Limos. After it triggers, one of the Mad Cab symbols on the reels is chosen randomly and expands to cover the reels where it appears. Expanded symbols pay across all lines and don’t need to sit next to each other to count as a win. Standard wins are not awarded on spins that result in a Call a Noober payout.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 Noober scatters in the base game awards 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. Scatters can land on any reel, once per reel, and they only show up in the base game. In free spins, the Call a Noober triggers when there are Mad Cab symbols on 3 or more reels. The chosen Mad Cab symbol then changes other Mad Cab symbols on the reels to match it before the expansion happens.

Buy Feature

Using the feature buy menu, players may purchase 5 free spins for 40x the bet, 10 free spins without Tuk-Tuks for 80x the bet, or 10 free spins with only Black Cabs and Yellow Taxis for 80x the bet.

Mad Cabs: Slot Verdict

People have been paying for lifts for centuries—probably longer—and while taxis are everywhere in real life, they’re not exactly a common slot theme. Iron Dog Studio has stepped in to give them their turn in the spotlight, and while Mad Cabs does deliver a few fun moments, it isn’t a title we can imagine ourselves hailing all that often.

A notable drawback is the game’s pace, which is a little surprising for something centred on road travel. The smartly titled Call a Noober sequence is enjoyable the first few times it lands, but it can start to feel like it drags as sessions go on. An option to toggle the animation on or off would have been useful, even if it isn’t excessively long. Still, the upside is what the feature can achieve—loading the reels with matching symbols—and it’s easy to daydream about seeing the Limo symbol stretched across all five reels. If that happens, the payout would be 2,500x the bet. Simply land the full-screen Limo 2 more times and you’ll reach Mad Cabs’ max win of 7,500x the stake. Also, if your goal is maximum full-screen potential, you might want to avoid the third bonus buy, since it removes Tuk-Tuks as well as Limos from the reels—full-screen Black Cab and Yellow Cab wins pay 300x and 400x, respectively.

By the time we’d arrived, the lasting impression was that Mad Cabs is to Iron Dog Studio what Road Rage was to Nolimit City: a step away from the usual formula, packed with a few intriguingly offbeat ideas, yet one that somehow feels a bit strangely unsatisfying overall.