The Majestic Taj Slot
Beautifully-designed symbols of golden tigers, peacocks, landmark buildings and Indian women adorn The Majestic Taj video slot from GamingSoft. It’s a 5-reel game, where these colourful symbols appear across the reels, lining up in any of 243 ways to win to create winning combinations, while a range of bonuses like wild substitutions, free spins and a 4-level progressive jackpot are included.
There’s lots of high quality GamingSoft slots in their extensive range, and maybe it’s a matter of personal taste, but this one is quite possibly the best of the lot. There are lots of highly-detailed images, both on the reels, and surrounding them, including a background of the Jal Mahal palace that sits on a lake in Jaipur, and intricately carved columns framing the main reels section. Of course, it all comes complete with a suitably Indian soundtrack that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Bollywood movie.
Even the control buttons are surrounded in gold, or encrusted with bright jewels. You can bet from a low limit of 1.00 per spin, to a maximum wager of 1000.00, although free The Majestic Taj video slots are provided, and because the minimum possible bet is still relatively high, taking the freeplay option is a good way to discover how it all works.
Off to India
There’s lots of symbols to line up in this game, although some are higher-value golden versions of others. With the 243 ways to win system in effect, you only need to see matching symbols in any places on adjacent reels from the left side to get a prize. Making up the smaller winning combinations we see the classic playing card icons 9 through to A, all of which carry the same value and pay 25 coins when landing on 3 connected reels from the left side, while 4 are worth 50x and seeing any matching symbol across all 5 reels will be worth a prize of 250 coins.
A blue peacock or orange tiger landing on 3, 4, or 5 reels will see wins of 50, 100, or 500 coins, while golden versions of the same symbols are valued slightly differently, which seems a little confusing, but they are high-paying icons, so we’ll forgive GamingSoft. A cobra also comes in green and golden versions and pays up to 1,500 coins when it’s on all 5 reels. The top awards are claimed when the elephant or girl symbols appear, and the golden girl returns 250, 500 or 2,500 coins when she’s on 3, 4, or 5 reels at once.
The Taj Mahal is not only the most famous building in India, it’s also the one that gives this slot game its name, plus it becomes the wild symbol, able to act as all except the jackpot icon if it can complete win-lines.
Triggering Bonus Spins
A golden earring is the scatter symbol that’s worth 2x the total bet when it stops in any 2 places at once, and 3 or 4 of this valuable item are worth 10x and 25x the stake. Any 3 of them will also trigger a free spins bonus round, while unusually, the wild is able to substitute for the scatter icon, which has the effect of making it a little easier to launch the bonus feature.
If 3 scatters appear in a single bonus spin, a further 8 games will be added on to the end, while 4 scatters at once sees 10 additional games and the reward for seeing 5 scatters appear at once is an extra 15 spins.
Progressive Jackpot Awards
An image of Ganesh, the elephant god, set against a lotus flower is an attractive sight that takes you to a progressive jackpot bonus round whenever it stops on reels 2, 3 and 4 at once. There’s 4 levels of jackpot, all shared across the GamingSoft range, and the current values are displayed above the reels. Players simply spin an astrological wheel to see which of the Mini, Minor, Major or Grand jackpots they have won, but the percentage of the overall prize that’s scooped depends on the triggering bet amount.
At the minimum stakes, just 10% of any progressive jackpot is awarded and it’s only gamblers at the maximum bet who will claim 100% of the prizes. It’s an unusual way of splitting up the prizes, but because all GamingSoft slots, across all online casinos are contributing to the prize pots, there are still some big rewards, even at lower stakes.
A Majestic Slot Game?
The quality of the design is beyond question, and anyone who likes the sight and colours of India is going to love the style of The Majestic Taj video slot. Apart from the minor disappointment of the standard playing card symbols being used, it’s filled with detailed images and fortunately, the gameplay is pretty good as well.
Having the 243 ways to win format would usually make it very easy to land winning combinations, but there’s a lot of different symbols here, and while winnings are still reliable, with a high return to player ratio, they are perhaps not as frequent as you would think.
Other than this, we really liked this game and thinks it’s going to be another big success for the GamingSoft slots and casino games developer.
