Jaguar Gems Slots
Nothing to do with luxury cars, the Jaguar Gems video slot from Inspired Gaming is all about jungle cats and of course, gemstones. Played out over 5 reels, crossed by 20 paylines, it comes with a series of unique bonuses, including free reel re-spins, extra wild symbols, two different randomly-triggered game modes and the option to make an extra bet to trigger features more frequently.
It’s a beautiful looking online casino slot which sets the reels against a mass of jungle trees and roots, all covered in moss and surrounded by slow-moving fireflies. The haunting eyes of the jaguar stare out from above the reels, blinking occasionally, and like the background image, they are very realistic. Symbols are mostly made up of different coloured gems, although a couple of bonus symbols will help players boost their bankrolls.
Like many other games available as free slots, Jaguar Gems can be played for free in most online casinos where the Inspired Gaming range is carried. The low limit wager is just 0.20 per spin, and gamblers who like to place bigger bets will be able to raise this to a high limit of 250.00. If players want to get more bonus games, they can place a Fortune Bet, which raises the stakes, but makes the bonus symbols double-height. An Autoplay option sets the reels spinning for up to 100 times, stopping when pre-determined win or loss limits are reached.
Valuable Gemstones
Five colourful and sparkling gems will create the majority of the winning combinations, with players getting a prize each time 3, 4 or 5 of the same type stop across a payline on connected reels running from the left side. The red and orange gems are both worth 5x, 20x or 100x the line stake when landing across a line, while the blue, purple and white ones each pay out 20x, 50x or 300x.
The only other standard symbol is the game logo, which is made up of the title and a dramatic image of a leaping cat, which wouldn’t look out of place on the hood of a car. The best awards of the game come when this lands on a payline, as it pays 40x, 200x or 1000x the amount staked on the line.
Wild Jaguar Features
A close-up view of the jaguar is a wild symbol, which only appears on reels 1, 3 and 5, so doesn’t have any value of its own, but will act as any other to help complete combinations of symbols. Once any wins have been paid out, the wild expands across the whole of the reel and all other reels re-spin once more for free.
If players trigger this bonus feature twice, without the re-spins resulting in a win, the next time it happens, they will be able to choose an extra reel to become filled with the expanding wild symbol, giving them a much better chance of completing a win-line.
During these bonus spins, instead of symbols needing to be across fixed paylines, they will only need to be on adjacent reels, so for example, landing a particular gemstone anywhere on reels 1, 2 and 3 will count as a winning combination and pay out coins accordingly.
Rewarding Game Modes
The eyes of the jaguar, and the background to the reels, can change colour at any time. If the cat has yellow eyes and the reels are in green, a different mix of symbols will lead to more frequent win-lines being created, but if the eyes and reels are in shades of red, standard winnings will occur less often, but the bonus features will be triggered more frequently.
It’s a great way to add another level of interest to the game and is a real innovation from Inspired Gaming who use this feature across a number of their slot machines.
Worth Getting Wild About?
While jungle cats and gemstones may not seem natural choices to mix together in an online slot machine, in the case of the Jaguar Gems video slot it works quite well, and the different themes are not really an issue.
The potentially rewarding bonus features are a real highlight, especially those reel re-spins where expanded wilds and symbols only needing to be on adjacent reels can create an easy win, but we also like the way that different game modes can be played.
It’s fully mobile-optimised and licenced for fair play and reliability, so no matter where or how punters choose to spin these reels, they will be getting a good return on their wagers.
