Scara-Bucks: Slot Overview

Developer Yggdrasil Gaming has put on the SPF 50 and headed, at least virtually, to the Middle East to create the Ancient Egyptian-themed online slot Scara-Bucks. For this sun-baked trek, the studio has gone with a cluster pays setup, where winning symbol groups line up a stack of modifiers. It’s a proven approach, but Scara-Bucks takes things further on the familiarity front by acting as a near feature-for-feature replica of Play’n GO’s Reactoonz. Still, if you’re going to borrow a blueprint, you could do worse—so let’s see how the swap from space creatures to desert sands holds up.

Ancient Egypt is the setting, and for Scara-Bucks, Yggdrasil Gaming has chosen a wide, sandy expanse under open skies, with the harsh desert sun blazing overhead. Oversized gold coins are scattered across the ground—thick, heavy-looking pieces that would be nice to get your hands on. That may be easier said than done, though, as a staff-wielding pharaoh-like figure looms over the scene, seemingly there to discourage opportunists from strolling in and helping themselves. A bit ironic, considering Scara-Bucks doesn’t hesitate to lift its gameplay and features straight from another slot.

Scara-Bucks runs on a 7×7 grid and uses cluster pays, awarding wins when 5 or more matching symbols connect horizontally or vertically. Any winning cluster is removed from the grid, allowing new symbols to drop in and potentially form additional clusters. Cascades keep going until the grid produces no further wins. Stakes run from 20c to $/€70 per spin, and with high volatility involved, results can swing sharply. Of the three RTP options available, the highest is set at 96%.

There are four low-paying and four high-paying symbols. The low pays are assorted Ancient Egyptian items, while the high pays depict the gods Sobek, Thoth, Anubis, and Horus. A 5-symbol cluster returns 0.1x to 1x the bet, while a 15+ symbol cluster pays 3x to 750x the bet. Wilds can replace any standard symbol, but they only show up via features.

Scara-Bucks: Slot Features

As you collect winning symbols, a meter fills up, lining up modifiers that activate once the grid stops producing wins. Alongside this system are the Devine Blessing, Wild Scarab, and Scarab Shift modifiers.

Golden Lotus

Every winning symbol during a round adds to the Golden Lotus charge meter. After collecting 25 winning symbols, a random Golden Lotus modifier is placed into the queue. You can queue up to 4 modifiers from Wild Wrath, Wild Surge or Wild Enchant, and the same modifier may be added multiple times. On the fifth charge, the Pharaoh Rush modifier is added. When wins stop appearing, the queued Golden Lotus modifiers activate. The round finishes once all modifiers have been spent and no additional wins occur. The meter resets at the beginning of each round. The modifiers are:

• Wild Blessing – changes 3 to 6 random visible symbols into wilds and removes all neighbouring symbols.
• Wild Wrath – removes all low symbols currently in view.
• Wild Surge – drops a wild into the centre and draws two crossing diagonal lines across the grid. Both diagonals show the same random symbol, but never wilds.
• Wild Enchant – selects one random low pay and converts every instance of it into another random regular pay symbol. If there are no lows on the grid, it selects a random high pay instead.
• Pharaoh Rush – places a 3×3 Pharaoh Wild onto the grid, which shifts and splits on each cascade. It first becomes two 2×2 Pharaoh Wilds, then nine 1×1 Pharaoh Wilds. Before each Pharaoh movement, symbols fall from above to refill the grid.

Devine (sic) Blessing

If four of the same symbol sit next to each other in a square, they combine into a 2×2 Big symbol with an x2 multiplier, meaning any win involving the Devine Blessing feature is doubled.

Wild Scarab

At the beginning of every spin, a random low symbol is marked as a Wild Scarab. When highlighted symbols are part of a win, they leave 2 wild symbols behind before the cascade happens.

Scarab Shift

At random, when a spin does not create a win, there is a chance that a random amount between 4 and 8 wild symbols will be added to the reels to try to force a winning result.

Scara-Bucks: Slot Verdict

After playing enough online slots, it’s easy to slip into the mindset that you’ve experienced everything the genre can offer. That’s not really true, since designers keep finding fresh, clever, and unexpected ways to entertain players—while also persuading them to spend a few more coins. With Scara-Bucks, the shock isn’t a new mechanic, but just how openly Yggdrasil Gaming has mirrored Play’n GO’s cluster pays favourite Reactoonz. Maybe, since the original launched in 2017, Yggdrasil is counting on newer players not recognising it? Or perhaps they don’t mind if people notice the similarities? Or could Scara-Bucks have been built by a former Play’n GO developer? Plenty to wonder about.

That leads to another point: what would make someone choose Scara-Bucks over Reactoonz? A couple of reasons not to are the lower RTP (96.51% vs 96%) and the smaller max win of 3,100x (even if Reactoonz almost never hits that kind of result in practice). The modifiers don’t really separate the two either, since they’re basically the same. It’s all so similar that it feels a little strange given Yggdrasil Gaming’s position in the industry. The core gameplay is easy to enjoy—the chase for the Gargantoon, sorry, Pharaoh Wild, is undeniably addictive—and there’s a long list of side features that can trigger along the way to keep things rolling. It worked when Play’n GO introduced it years ago, and it still works here, just with an awkward copycat shadow hanging over it.

With modifiers that are largely identical and several key stats that are less appealing, it’s very difficult to suggest Scara-Bucks over the slot it so clearly imitates. It runs smoothly, but it runs just as smoothly—if not better—in Reactoonz, which also comes with stronger stats in a more distinctive package.