It has been another busy month of new slots, so let’s quickly have a brief look at a few of those that have landed.
I’ll take a high, medium, and low variance title and whiz you through the main features.
None of them are doing anything particularly special with the RTP, sticking close to 96%, but there are some interesting features to be found none-the-less.
Gods of Olympus Megaways (Blueprint)
Another Megaways slot? Some feel it’s getting old, others can’t get enough. This one is high variance and in my opinion at least, better than a lot of the rest. It’s certainly not a clone anyway.
There a five features in the base game for a start, so they will keep you going until you hit the bonus rounds. The base game features are:
- Wild Thunder – Up to 10 wild multipliers added to the reels.
- Colossal Thunder – Up to 6 reels converted into a colossal reel.
- Mystery Thunder – Mystery symbols added to all 6 reels.
- Bonus Thunder – Bonus symbols added to the reels on maximum megaways.
- Respin Thunder – Winning symbols held in position for a re-spin until no more wins occur.
You can buy your way into the free spins round for 100x your bet, but three scatters trigger the bonus rounds for free, and there are 4 of them:
- Colossal Free Spins – A 2x roaming wild on reels 2-5. This can be upgraded to up to 625x by landing scatter symbols. Each upgrade also bags you another 2 free spins.
- Wild Storm Free Spins – Special symbols on reels 1 and 6 turn matching symbols in the wild zone into wilds. The wild zone is reels 2-5. Collecting scatters activates max megaways in the wild zone and any upgrade will increase your free spins by 2.
- Rise of Olympus Free Spins – For every wild that lands your multiplier will increase by 1. This multiplier is unlimited. Every five wilds collected will net you two more free spins.
- Almighty Wild Free Spins – Round begins with wild multipliers of 2x and 3x, with wins able to be multiplied by 81x. Collecting scatters will upgrade the multipliers to a max win multiplier of 625x. Each upgrade awards 2 more free spins.
Quite a package i’m sure you’ll agree!
Riders of the Storm (Thunderkick)
The medium variance title is another steampunk adventure slot and this one is coming directly from the guys over at Thunderkick. They are known as an inventive contemporary slot developer and they have really found their stride with this one.
The base game contains wilds with multipliers and a randomly triggered feature that can turn up to 4 reels fully wild, but while these are welcome additions to the 243 ways to pay slot, it’s the free spins that gets the glory.
You have four options:
The choice is yours but the RTP remains almost identical whichever you choose. However, the walking wilds can extend the life of the bonus round dramatically. I went for the Huntress and came away with 46x my stake – you can re-trigger free spins too.
Butterfly Staxx 2 (NetEnt)
A much softer game than the last two, this is a low variance game for players wanting a more relaxing time of it. It’s an absolutely beautiful game with gorgeous animations, but can it pay?
Funnily enough, I did better out of this one than either of the other two!
There are plenty of regularly occurring features too, but the one you will see most often is the re-spins. Whenever you land a full stack of butterfly’s they will fly over to the left most reel for the re-spin. These will continue until no new butterlies show up. If you cover the two left reels in butterflies then a second play area opens up giving you double the chances to win. This can happen a third time too. See the picture on the right for an example.
The other two features are triggered by landing a scatter on reels 1, 3 and 5 simultaneously:
- Butterfly Spins – All symbols will be replaced with cocoon symbols, and these can be active or dormant. Active cocoons will release butterflies that fly to the left most position on the row they are on. There are 3 play areas from the start to the end of this round.
- Butterfly Frenzy – This is essentially a pick me game with 5 stages. You choose butterflies and each one will boost your balance and potentially get you to the next stage.
It’s a sweet little game, almost hypnotic after a while. It’s similar to the first of its name it’s true, but this is certainly an improvement.