The live dealer craze has been fueled by a slew of quality releases emphasizing the elite casino table games.

And indeed, Blackjack and Roulette titles routinely make huge splashes in the market.

Still, there’s more to live gaming than that!

Whether it’s craps, lotto, Teen Patti, or Mahjong, all kinds of gaming have experienced a major popularity boost in recent years. Perhaps best of all, though, have been the completely unique titles that could never exist on a brick-and-mortar gaming floor, but seem destined for casino in online platforms.

Evolution’s smash hit Cash or Crash definitely falls into this category.

While probably closest to a lottery-style game, this 2021 offering is entirely its own thing. The core of gameplay consists of drawing balls out of a drum. There are three possible outcomes to each betting round: a winning green ball; a losing red ball; and a golden ball, which opens one of the bonus features.

Players are placed on a virtual blimp ride. The top payouts are hidden above the clouds, and the only way to reach them is to hit enough consecutive green or gold balls in a row – with each green ball drawn, players advance once step up a virtual ladder…

… and with each step up, the payouts increase in size!

A red ball, however, crashes the blimp. When this happens, players lose their stake, and the next round can begin anew.

Gameplay is about as simple as can be. Players can decide if they want to take part in the round to come, and select their stake if they do. With every green or gold ball drawn, three choices are available:

• Continue to the next round, wagering your original stake plus anything you’ve won thus far
• Take Half of the current stake, then continuing on to the next level with the other half
• Take All of the stake, and withdraw from further betting rounds.

Obviously, the goal is to reach the highest payout level possible, then Take All before a red ball appears and all is lost. In practice, this is not easy to do!

Players do have one secret weapon, though: the Golden Ball. When it appears, two wonderful things happen. First of all, players gain an “extra life,” meaning that the drawing of a single red ball will not end the round. Second, the payout level rises for all subsequent gaming levels.

This doesn’t make a tremendously big difference in the lower and medium tiers, but if players are fortunate enough to reach level 16, the payout level leaps from 550x without the golden ball to 760x with it. On the top level of 20 (which, of course, is not attained very often) the payout without golden ball makes is an impressive 18,000x… with the ball, however, it leaps to a truly astonishing 50,000x!

To say that the visual presentation looks like a game show doesn’t quite do it justice. Graphically, this comes closer to augmented reality than to your average daytime tv programming – the screen literally seems to sparkle.

Best of all, the overall RTP is completely without rival at 99.59%. That blows away any other offering of any kind in any casino.

With offerings like this, it’s easy to understand why some Provinces are strengthening ID laws for gambling: it’s not only about protecting the underage population from the high-stakes world of online gambling before they’re ready… it’s also about making sure legal bettors are able to claim their wins with ease!