Play Jungle Jim El Dorado for Free

Jungle Jim takes place in two very distinct settings. The base game is in the lush south American jungles, we really love that they have used transparent reels for the game as the backdrops are excellent and we don’t want a huge reel set obscuring them. The second is a gold laden treasure room, we assume in Eldorado itself, which again is stunningly rendered. The whole game is beautifully drawn for that matter, including Jungle Jim himself. The level of animation work here is right up there with many modern animated films though, maybe Jim could have had one or two extra moves programmed as he can get a little repetitive.

The reel icons will come as no surprise, there is a host of coin chests, rare native treasures and rare gems on offer. On the latter, a small touch we really like is that the emeralds, rubies and the like are large rough uncut stones such as you would find in the jungle, not the polished shop stones you would see on more generic slots. It’s small touches like this which really set apart slot games which use their theme to full effect from those which, quite frankly, miss the boat.

The pay-lines are fixed so there’s no real user interaction in game style outside of choosing your betting and bankroll strategy. There’s more than enough room in the bet range to satisfy all kinds of players too. Microgaming haven’t yet released RTP and variance statements for the game, so we can only gauge how it pays from our brief play on it, initial impressions were a decent RTP and a medium-high level of variance, no surprises here then for a competitor of Gonzo.

IGT call it cascading reels, NetEnt term it avalanche and for Microgaming it’s rolling reels. Whatever you pick this popular mechanic is the process where existing wins fall or explode from the screen to be replaced by a fresh symbol drop from above. Younger fans will mostly know this style from the Bejewelled Blitz game on FaceBook, for those of us a little more seasoned, this is how Tetris worked. As with most slots titles that use it, there is an increasing multiplier on Jungle Jim from 1x to 5x.

The game isn’t out for full release yet so we don’t know the exact symbol values or how a wild will function, with everything else going on in the game and the high volatility, we’d have to assume it will be fixed and grant no reward of its own in terms of a jackpot, just like the individual scatters. Of course, with the scatters, if you can collect all three, you will trigger the free spins round. Whilst this does take place on a separate reel set, it uses all the same feature mechanics of the bonus round, only the re-trigger is extra in terms of win to spin potential. If this sounds critical, it isn’t, a re-triggering spins round on a game with so much action and pay-out potential is definitely worthwhile!

If you liked Gonzo, you will love Jungle Jim, it really is that simple. The game is lovely to look at, fun to play and contains all the serious win potential that a high variance game should. Clearly, the high volatility does require a bit more bankroll control than a gentler slot game but, that’s the point of high risk / high reward games. Also, it rather sits with the theme, many explorers went in search of Eldorado to come home empty handed, others plundered riches in the jungles of South America, which will it be for you?