Tombola Arcade

Tombola Arcade launched in 2016 as the slots side of a brand that had been running bingo since 2006. It shares its licence, its cashier and its Sunderland operation with the bingo site, and it shares its defining feature too: every game on it was built in house, which means you cannot play any of them anywhere else.

The licence holder is tombola (International) Plc, company number 105556, registered at 55 Line Wall Road in Gibraltar and licensed in Great Britain by the Gambling Commission under account 38613, with a Gibraltar licence alongside it. The games and the chat moderation are run from the north east of England.

Welcome Offer

The offer is a 100% deposit match up to £50, with free spins added on top, and the site states it plainly:

Significant Terms: Deposit from £10 and get a 100% bonus match up to £50. First deposit only. Any winnings can be withdrawn. Bonus money cannot be withdrawn. T&Cs apply.

Deposit the £10 minimum and you play with £20. Deposit £50 and you play with £100, and £50 is as much bonus as the offer will ever give you however far past that you go.

The notable part is what is missing. There is no published wagering multiplier, no winnings cap and no stated expiry on the bonus. Your own money is staked before the bonus, bonus money cannot be withdrawn, and winnings can. That is close to the simplest shape a match offer comes in, and it is worth saying so before the rest of this review gets critical, because an offer this plain is genuinely unusual.

Promotions

Jackpot Champions is the regular fixture, a daily leaderboard that pays the players who finish at the top of it, and seasonal promotions come and go around it.

That is a thinner ongoing programme than the bingo site next door, which runs monthly promotions, guaranteed jackpots, free games and reload offers. The welcome match here is better than most and what follows it is quieter than most, which is the wrong way round if the aim is to keep people.

Slots and Other Games

The good part first. Every slot here is original to the brand. In an industry that recycles themes, layouts and sometimes whole lobbies between sites, a cabinet of games you have not seen a hundred times is a real point of difference, and the same praise is due to any operator that builds its own.

Alongside the slots sits the usual spread of instant-win and arcade-style games the brand has put together over the years, all of them made to the same recipe.

The site also runs more like a bingo hall than a casino, in that the games sit next to a very large and very active chat room with more than 100 moderators keeping it civil.

Now the less good part, in two halves.

The first is the chat itself, and this is purely a matter of taste. Personally I do not want to watch people moan about the weather while I am playing, and I cannot think of much worse. It is easy to ignore, but if you are in the mood for a quiet lobby it is not what you are getting.

The second is more substantial. A lot of what gets said in that chat is complaints about how rarely anyone wins, and the in-house games are part of why. When players do not recognise a game they do not trust it, and knowing it was made by the site they are playing on does not help. For the avoidance of doubt: this operator holds a British licence, its games are tested and they pay out at their published rates. But every legal slot is built with a house edge, which is the whole business model and the reason the complaints keep coming. The games are fair. Fair is not the same as generous.

The honest trade-off is variety. Building everything yourself means a smaller catalogue than a site that buys in from a dozen studios, and it means no Megaways, no branded licences and none of the big networked jackpots. If breadth is what you want from a slots site, this is the wrong one.

Depositing and Withdrawing

The cashier is the bingo site's, and it is stricter than most in ways that work in your favour. The minimum deposit is £10 and there is a £500 cap on what you can put in across a week. You can only deposit when your balance is under £2, which rules out topping up mid-session to chase a loss.

You can register up to four payment methods but keep only one active, and withdrawals always go back to the method you last deposited with. Debit cards, Apple Pay, bank transfer and PayPal are all accepted. PayPal has a condition attached: it is only offered to players who have used it on the site in the past 6 months, so you cannot move onto it later if you started with a card.

The minimum withdrawal is £10. Closing your account lowers that to £2, and the £2 is kept as an administrative charge, which is a petty way to say goodbye to someone. Dormant accounts lose any bonus funds, and an account left with no balance is closed. No processing times are published.

Customer Support

Live chat and a freephone number, staffed from the same operation as the bingo site, with cover stated around the clock. A phone line is more than most casinos offer and it is the fastest route when something involves your account rather than a game.

Review Summary

When I first wrote about this site I said it was like booking a luxurious 5-star hotel room and having to walk through a reception that looked designed 70 years ago and never touched since. The games were good, the shopfront was not. That has been fixed. The investment that went into the bingo site reached this one too, and the reception now matches the rooms.

What I still want is more for the people who stay. The welcome match is excellent and then the ongoing side thins out: a daily leaderboard is not much of a loyalty programme, and real money slot tournaments would suit a site whose whole catalogue is exclusive to it.

Four stars, and the fourth one is for the offer and the originality rather than the size of the lobby. If you want games nobody else has, a bonus with no wagering figure buried in it and a cashier that puts the brakes on, this is a genuinely different slots site. If you want the biggest catalogue and the branded jackpot titles, it was never built to give you those.