Play Once upon a Rhyme for Free

Taking the approach that Shrek did, all your fairy tale and rhyming couplings live in one place, all of them seeming to have a lot of money to give if you should make the right matches.

One of the elements of the design we love more than anything else, and it may sound odd, is that the lower value icons have been replaced with card suits; very in-keeping with Alice in Wonderland. What it means is that none of the tiles are boring or dull, they’ve all got a zest, a vibe that’s all their own.

Starting with these symbols, players have the chance to win between 4 and 100 credits, depending on how many of them they find on their reels - three will get you the smallest amount while five will bag you the biggest. After that the money really starts to climb, with the minimal amount being no less than 40 credits for every three, which is a good amount in case you’re wondering.

The wild, an elegant swan, will do its normal trait of subbing other symbols, but it’ll also pay gamers the most money at 500 credits. Talk about a tidy sum, with that we can buy a few goodies to savour.

A lot of the features activate randomly and therefore you don’t have to do anything to find them, but that just adds to the whole charm of the game. First up we’ll look at the Three Men in a Tub. All that will happen is that these guys will sail on by in their little boat, spraying up bubbles as they go, any of the bubbles that are left will pop and change the symbols in their place so that they match. It’s a bit like a random wild.

The King’s Men start charging into battle on the grid and invade between 2 and 5 of your reels. When they stampede they will select a random symbol to keep appearing on each spin, which will help determine the value of what you win. It’s very simple but rewarding all the same.

Little Miss Muffet is less than giving, though her bonus is still good fun: she can turn any of the icons into a wild.

Humpty Dumpty makes an appearance too (what would the game be without him?), and he brings a lot of free spins with him; the spins are different from normal as they’re packed with up to 10 wilds. The matrix will keep on spinning until all those wilds have been used up, though if the Three Blind Mice accidently push Humpty off again, some more spins will be given as compensation.

This isn’t the full extent of what’s on offer, but we think that some of the fun should be in finding them out for yourself. Not to mention you already have more than enough to be getting on with.

Once Upon a Rhyme is exceptional. End of. It’s a very busy game and has a lot of features, so much so that it becomes somewhat overwhelming keeping track of them all. That being said, for a bet of between 0.20 and 500 credits, what have you got to lose to try it out?