California Gold Rush Slot
There’s gold in them hills! Well, prizes in them reels anyway, with KA Gaming’s California Gold Rush slot digging up winnings and extra features such as wild multipliers and free games. It’s a five-reel, 50-line slot machine that takes you to a time of adventure and discovery, as prospectors from around the world searched for riches in the Wild West. You won’t have to search for long to uncover the riches that this fun slot game has to offer, with themed symbols like a lamp, pickaxe, Western town and Sheriff all helping to reward you. Playable on Windows powered devices, Android smartphones, tablets and Apple products, it’s a fun, fair slot from a developer that’s rapidly gaining an enviable reputation.
There’s some nice details to this cartoon style game, such as the rope effect surrounding to each of the circular symbols and the entrance to a gold mine that sits behind them. Fireflies buzz around the screen bringing some extra movement to proceedings and symbols become animated whenever they become part of a win. Examples of these nice animations include the steam train chugging along and the anvil getting struck by a hammer. It’s little touches like this that indicate how much care KA Gaming take with the development of each game in their range.
KA Gaming is an ambitious company that’s based in Taiwan. Their portfolio of around 65 slot games can currently be played in 27 countries across Asia and beyond, but they are expanding their range and reach. Each slot in the KA Gaming range somehow manages to have something unique about them. It can be the chosen topic, bonus features, reel layout or payline format, but they all have fairness and generous return to player percentages in common. You can play free California Gold Rush video slots or stake your claim to real cash awards from just 0.50 per spin.
Going for Gold
You collect coins when three or more of the same symbol lands across any of the 50 lines in an unbroken run from the left side. It’s a standard format that gives punters plenty of chances to win in a low volatility game. A review of the paytable reveals that the smallest wins come from landing the gold pan, with two, five, or ten times the per line bet claimed when three, four, or five are seen. Minecarts, the anvil, a bank and a young prospector are also featured, but the top-paying standard symbol is the old prospector. This grizzled-looking guy is worth 50x, 150x, or 600x your line stake.
You can strike pure gold when the symbol of golden ingots appears. It’s a wild symbol which will act as others to help complete win-lines, tripling the base payouts when it does so. Landing the gold pan on reels one and three for example, wouldn’t normally be worth anything, but if the wild is on the same payline on reel two, you win not just the two times the line bet that three gold pans would normally pay, but six times. It’s a golden opportunity to collect higher prizes.
Wanted: Free Spins
A Wanted poster is perhaps one of the most iconic images of the Wild West and it’s used as a scatter symbol in this game. You’ll definitely want to see this symbol appear, as the top prizes are paid out by the scatter icon. Just two will be needed for a win of 100x your total stake, while a massive 2,500x is paid out to lucky punters who see five at a time.
If it’s seen anywhere in three or more places at once, you are also awarded ten free spins, and to make these a more exciting round, a wild symbol is added to the middle reels after each spin. Any winning combinations created with the help of the wild will be multiplied by six times over during the round. The free games can’t be retriggered though, so once the feature is over, you go back to the base games.
Some Nuggets of Information
All 50 paylines are active, so you can’t choose how many to play, but there’s a huge choice of bet sizes to pick from. At the 2000.00 maximum bet you could probably buy your own gold mine when the right symbols land, but if that’s a little out of your budget, then stakes can be adjusted to suit just about any bankroll.
The Spin button can be clicked once to get things going, or you can hold it down to start the Auto function. This saves time and effort by spinning the reels for as many times as you want and all you have to do is sit back and watch the software do all the hard work. Turn up the volume to have the spinning of the reels accompanied by some music, which may not have much of a Western style to it but is quite pleasant nonetheless.
Like all KA Gaming slot machines, California Gold Rush has been tested for fair play by Gaming Labs International, which is an independent facility which many of the top developers use as a way of guaranteeing that their slots can be trusted.
Unearthing Similar Slots
Among the plethora of Wild Western themed online slot machines, you’ll find a few dedicated to the exact same topic as California Gold Rush. With cartoon prospectors, bandits, bulldogs and donkeys, in a high-quality 3D style, the Gold Rush slot from Habanero is well worth digging in to. Five reels and 25 paylines lead you to some rich rewards, such as free spins and wild substitutions. These are no ordinary free spins though, as before they begin, the mine will collapse, adding random symbols to the reels for the chance of a big payday. Other treasures awaiting in this game include progressive jackpots that can be won at any time and a gamble feature that can multiply your winnings over and over again.
Gold Miner, from YoYou Gaming, has gold nuggets, mine carts and all the other items that you would expect to find in a slot based around the theme. Look beyond the obvious symbols however, and you will uncover bonus games where you can win huge multiplier prizes, free spins with more multipliers to collect and the chance to land one of four progressive jackpots. The five reels and 30- paylines are set against the backdrop of a mine where punters can also uncover diamonds worth up to 1,000x the amount wagered per line.
A Wild Western Winner
Head down the mine with our friendly prospectors and you’ll find a pleasing online casino slot machine that comes with tried and tested features which we found pretty easy to trigger. It’s certainly preferable to sitting down a cold dark mine and the odds of striking virtual gold are probably a lot better than those faced by the 300,000 or so prospectors who headed out for the real Californian Gold Rush back in the 19th century.
