Unusual Suspects Slot Review 2024

While most of us would like to consider ourselves perfectly law-abiding citizens, the creative license afforded slot games allows us to abandon our moral instincts, albeit temporarily, and imagine life on the other side of the blue line for a day. Or a few hours, at least.

Games Global studio partner Northern Lights Gaming is one in a long line happy to facilitate such make-believe, winding back the clock to a swinging era populated by detectives and convicts all aiming to gain the upper hand in a reimagined classic cops’n’robbers showdown.

The cop in this case sports a spectacular moustache, up against four mafia wannabe heavies plus a foot soldier. Accompanying the action is a bog-standard jazz number on hand to induce some light foot tapping in between spins, while the cartoon-like design is nicely done, plonking us somewhere downtown that could be Manhattan or Chicago. Who knows. All-in, a comical take on the theme, as is often the case in games featuring such personnel.

So far, it’s hard to pin down anything too unconventional about what Unusual Suspects has thrown up – such as the prevalence of criminal warlords and “Five-o” in slot land, and the studio’s approach to the subject matter. Let’s grab a clipboard and see if we can report on any unusual findings within the gameplay…

Unusual Suspects Base Game and Features

A 5×4 playing area houses 20 pay lines for the purposes of win creations in Unusual Suspects. Land 3 or more identical symbols on a win line from reel 1 to earn yourself a payout. Medium volatile, the low-paying symbols are depicted as 10-A playing card ranks, all awarding 1x the bet when wins of 5 symbols hit, with a pair of handcuffs, a pistol, dynamite, and a sack of cash selected as the premiums; the latter awarding 10 times the bet for winning combos of 5.

Pivotal to much of what Unusual Suspects has in its locker are Wild symbols able to land on any reel, serving three separate functions.

In addition to paying out 10x the bet when combinations of 5 form, Wilds substitutes all other regular paying symbols and leaves frames in the position they occupy. Golden Wilds produce additional Wilds or one more Golden Wild when they land, and if a Wild lands a framed cell, the multiplier gets a 1x boost up to a max 5x.

Detective Wild Bonus

Any framed positions in view transform into Wilds once the Detective Wild shows up. After he disappears, framed cells in the base game lose their frame but are locked in place during Free Spins.

Free Spins Booster

Land two scatters simultaneously during a base game spin to add 1 token to the Booster Meter. Filling the meter with 50 tokens activates Big Boss 1 in Free Spins. More about him further on.

Nudging Respins come into play if a pair of scatters falls on rows 1-3, which sees any scatter-bearing reels locked in place while all others are respun.

Gamble Feature

Where applicable, players will notice a Gamble Feature directly under the Bonus Buy option.

This facility gives players a stab at unlocking the bonus round for a fee relative to the likelihood of it triggering. Set your chance of success between 10% and 90%, with your bet amount updated accordingly. Pay 19.30 times your stake to take 50:50 odds at activating the bonus, which rises to 34.74x the bet for a 90% chance.

Unusual Suspects: Big Boss Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters is your ticket to a 10, 15, or 20-strong Free Spins haul, respectively, which shifts play to what looks like the Detective’s office.

Whenever Detective symbols land during the feature, they are stored on the Free Spins Bonus Trail as follows:

• Big Boss 1 triggered by landing 3 Detectives = 5 Free Spins with 2x multiplier
• Big Boss 2 triggered by landing 6 Detectives = 5 Free Spins with 3x multiplier
• Big Boss 3 triggered by landing 9 Detectives = 5 Free Spins with 5x multiplier
• Big Boss 4 triggered by landing 12 Detectives = 5 Free Spins with 10x multiplier

Unusual Suspects Bonus Buy

For the somewhat precise equivalent amount of 38.60 times your bet, Free Spins can be purchased instantly by players located outside the UK via a Bonus Buy option, thereby bypassing the base game requirements.

Unusual Suspects: Our Verdict

‘Usual Suspects’ might have been a more apt name for the game after taking it for a test drive Its baddies are generally portrayed as no less devious, cunning, or hellbent on evading the law than any other you’re likely to encounter in the world of slots – and they generally operate consistent with their usual M.O., too – making you question what’s so unusual about them.

Onto the gameplay, and it’s here that Northern Lights have attempted to rip up the typical cops’n’robbers formula with some neat twists on relatively rare features, which they’ve pulled off quite well, all things considered.

It’s not every day you encounter framed positions on the reels, and when you do, they’re invariably tied to a Wild symbol revealed within a set number of spins. Here, you get to build up the number of frames without ceiling until the cop drops by to make his arrests and turn them all Wild. Great in practice when you’ve amassed a tidy haul of frames while awaiting his arrival. Add in some multiplier action should a WIld re-populate an existing framed position, and the feature can certainly pack a punch. Wilds spawning new Wilds isn’t a bad idea either. It gets better still during Free Spins, where frames stick until the conclusion of the feature to help those wins mount up.

A final note about Unusual Suspects’ 8,000x max win – not the most explosive around, but not the stingiest either – putting it in the mid-range making this a tightly packaged, fun cops’n’robbers alternative