Xterminate: Slot Overview

Hold onto your knitting, players; this one brings some seriously volatile action. Xterminate is so volatile that its creator, Thunderkick, opens the session with a warning that it’s not for the faint-hearted. Considering Thunderkick isn’t exactly famous for soft math models to begin with, that warning carries weight. If you’re still in, you may as well embrace the chaos, because Xterminate barrels straight into protest mode and takes a swing at the establishment.

Even with all the nods to riots and anarchy, it’s not entirely clear what’s actually going on in Xterminate. The furious crowd in the background is obvious enough, but what they’re protesting is anyone’s guess. Is it something noble like world peace, anti-robot/AI sentiment, or something more personal? Most people have at least one thing that makes their blood boil and that they wish could be changed, so pick your cause and imagine you’re out on the streets causing mayhem in protest while you play Xterminate.

As noted, Xterminate is a highly volatile slot, though its RTP isn’t nearly as extreme, with a default setting of 94.12%. The action plays out on a 6×5 grid, and wins are formed using a scatter pays system. Put simply, landing at least 8 identical pay symbols anywhere on the grid produces a win, which then activates the Avalanche feature – this mechanic removes symbols that were part of winning scatters from the board and the gaps are filled as new symbols avalanche down. After the drop, if another winning scatter appears, the avalanche triggers again and the cycle repeats.. Bets in the base game run from 10 c to $/€100 per spin.

Graffiti-styled 10-A card royals make up the lower-paying symbols, followed by a spray can, a spiky bat, a gas mask, and a glowing-eyed robot as the premium icons. For landing a winning scatter of 8-9 matching symbols, payouts range from 1 to 4 times the base bet, or 3 to 7 times the bet for hitting 12+ OAK.

Xterminate: Slot Features

Xterminate doesn’t include a separate bonus round, so everything happens within the base game. Along the way, you can encounter the Avalanche feature, the Xterminate Multiplier Feature, Bomb symbols, Charged Wilds, and the Bet+ gambling options.

Xterminate Multiplier Feature

All wins are shown as bet multiples and are built up by the Xterminate Multiplier shown above the reels. The process works like this: each win is multiplied first by the Xterminate Multiplier, then that result is added back into the Xterminate Multiplier, and the loop continues. When an Avalanche sequence ends, the Xterminate Multiplier is multiplied by the base bet and the final total is paid. The Xterminate Multiplier resets at the start of every new round.

Bomb Symbol

If a Bomb symbol lands without winning combinations, it explodes but does not remove all instances of the most common symbol currently visible, Charged Wild symbols, or Bomb symbols. If two or more symbols are tied as the most common, only the highest-paying one is protected. Everything else is cleared away, which triggers an Avalanche.

Charged Wild Symbol

The Charged Wild replaces all symbols except the Bomb. It spawns with a random number of lives from 1 to 3. A single life is used up when the wild takes part in a win (no matter how many combinations it helped create). Once all lives are gone, the Charged Wild disappears from the reels.

Bet+

The Bet+ feature lets players face Xterminate in three distinct ways:

• Win Boost – the odds of winning are 2 times higher on each spin, and each spin costs 2x the bet. The RTP for this is 94.25%.
• Win Boost Plus – the odds of winning are 5 times higher on each spin, and each spin costs 5x the bet. The RTP for this is 94.35%.
• Guaranteed Wild – each spin is guaranteed at least 1 winning combination and costs 10x the bet. The RTP for this is 95.45%.

Xterminate: Slot Verdict

Reviewing Xterminate left us with mixed impressions. It has some genuinely interesting ideas, but also a few aspects that weigh it down. One early buzzkill was the underwhelming RTP, raising the question of whether Thunderkick is following ELK Studios in a race to the bottom. Hopefully not. The absence of free spins or any bonus game also stood out. That’s not to say a slot can’t work without them, but Xterminate did feel like it was missing a feature of that kind to anticipate. That feeling is amplified when you get stuck in a dead-spin loop, scraping small wins here and there. In a more cynical moment, you could argue Xterminate was built this way to steer players toward its Bet+ options. Maybe, maybe not. They’re entirely optional, and they do offer alternative ways to take a punt if that’s what you’re after.

In practice, Xterminate becomes a chase to see whether it can really ramp up the Xterminate Multiplier feature. To be clear, you don’t land a scatter win and immediately collect cash in the way a “normal” slot might. Instead, there’s a kind of back-and-forth exponential interaction between scatter win values and the Xterminate Multiplier Feature, with the payout delivered once the Avalanching stops. It’s certainly different, and you can picture how wild a huge win chain could feel. As the opening warning makes clear, though, Xterminate is highly volatile, so the contest between building a big Xterminate Multiplier value and running out of funds could easily end badly. Or it could end well if luck is on your side, since Xterminate can technically reach 25,000x the bet. That said, for transparency, it’s worth noting that max wins in Thunderkick games are rare and don’t show up often on social media or big win forums. As a result, the stated max win should be treated with a grain of salt.

The desire to keep fighting might fade before your bankroll does if the dead-spin struggle is intense, and Xterminate can feel quite repetitive in its loop. Still, it’s also fairly inventive, and the urge to take just one more spin to see whether it kicks off a snowballing chain is real. That makes Xterminate an intriguing option—just a highly volatile one with a weak RTP that could end up doing damage like a perfectly timed baton strike.