Ask the Slot Expert: Project Moon. Project Meh?

On April 11, 1970, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert left the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center atop a Saturn V rocket to go to the moon. Their mission, Apollo 13, did not go as planned. Jim Lovell describes the problems the flight and ground crews had to solve in his book Lost Moon.

Ron Howard used the book as the basis for his film Apollo 13. I didn't know how many liberties Opie took with the way things actually happened. (How Accurate Is Ron Howard's 'Apollo 13'?)(What did the makers of the movie 'Apollo 13' get wrong?) I can see that sometimes composite characters have to be created to stand in for multiple people in real life. And sometimes timelines have to be expanded or compressed (take, for instance, another Tom Hanks Movie The Bridge of Spies).

I don't see any reason, though, for writing a scene in which the crew argues and Haise blames Swigert for the accident. Swigert did what he was supposed to do when he was supposed to do it. The rest of the crew knew that and the argument scene is a total fabrication.

I thought about Lost Moon as I walked through the slot floor at Red Rock looking for a new slot game called Project Moon. There was a "New Game Alert" page in my September mailer saying that the machine was coming soon. There was no mention of it in the October mailer, but then the November mailer said that the game was available now.

The hype:

No reels, no lines 'Risk or Ride™' style game,
With every rocket launch giving players
a 9 in 10 chance to boost their prize!

I wonder whether the monthlong gap between "coming soon" and "available now" indicates that there was a delay in getting the machines on the floor. In any case, I'm glad I didn't try to find the machine in October.

In mid-November, I looked in the places that I thought Red Rock would place a new game, a high-visibility area. No luck. Maybe there was still a problem with the machines.

I did another pass through the slot floor on the next point multiplier day. Still no Project Moon machines. Then I said to myself, Self, I said, I think Stations added a slot finder function to its app.

Sure enough, the app has a slot finder function and it sent me to the middle of the slot floor. Not exactly a high-visibility area. But there were the machines. My moon was no longer lost.

The screen on Project Moon shows a rocket ship ready to launch. You choose your bet amount using the tabs and slider on the button deck. The machine I played had bets ranging from $1 to $19 on the red tab and $20 to $200 on the green tab.

You start a play by pressing the Play button or the Launch button. Your rocket will either fail to launch and explode or it will take off and award a prize from 101% to 500% of your launch bet amount. Your chances of a successful launch are 9 in 10.

After a successful launch, your prize is displayed beneath the rocket. You can either take your win or try to "boost" it -- that is, let it ride and risk it on another play. If you hit the Boost button, you once again have a 9 in 10 chance of a prize from 101% to 500% of the boost bet amount. Your rocket explodes if your boost is unsuccessful.

Here's an example. You bet $1. The launch is successful and 101 (101% of your bet) is the current prize. You're feeling lucky, so you boost it. The boost is successful and you win 101% again for a current prize of 102.01 credits.

Hmm. That can't be right. Maybe watching some YouTube videos of game play will clear things up.

I found a video by Casino Kelly online playing at an $8 bet. The launch is successful and the current prize is 829.

A multiplier is displayed above the Take Win button on the screen next to the text "Current Payout". The multiplier is 1.03x. Do the math: 1.03x800=824. That's not 829.

She decides to boost and it is successful. The multiplier increases to 1.05x and the current prize is now 844, not 840. The third boost is also successful. The multiplier is 1.13x and the current prize is 909, not 904. Must be the new math.

The verbiage with the percentages is almost word-for-word from the help screen. You might as well ignore it and the multiplier. If your launch or boost are successful, your current prize will increase. If either are unsuccessful, your rocket blows up and you lose your initial bet.

Like the Starship Enterprise, Project Moon also has a Warp Speed feature. The machine makes it seem like you hit a bonus feature, but the help screens say otherwise. "The Warp Speed feature is an alternative win presentation that may display on bets that award at least 150% of the bet amount, and it is meant for entertainment purposes only."

Playing the game boils down to deciding how far you're willing to press your luck, like playing the Double Up feature on some video poker machines. Are you willing to risk what you've won so far on a 90% chance at a random increase?

I miss the suspense of the reels stopping in succession and the animations that are sometimes on the symbols. I'm going to give Project Moon another try, but I doubt I'll be a regular player.

What do you think? Do you like Project Moon?

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