Time flies – a week has gone by again and we are slowly inching towards Christmas already. It’s perhaps the right opportunity to focus on some early surprises on new slots from Blueprint Gaming, Merkur, NetEnt, and Red7. They have one thing in common – new and exciting pay mechanics and features that will add to the entertainment factor and big win potential.
NetEnt is unveiling up to four reel modifiers simultaneously on Wild Bazaar, a video slot in a 5×4 format and a rather strange 26 pay lines. Meanwhile, Merkur Gaming has unleashed wild creatures in Dinosaur Kingdom, which will turn symbols into wilds for big win potential. A free spins round that can activate up to three game windows for triple the wins will add to the excitement.
With Shadow State, Red7 takes us back to the prohibition era, surprising us with random features and a free spins round with collectible evidence symbols that will add higher win multipliers and extra free spins.
Blueprint Gaming is also taking us back in history, but only as recent as 1985 when the movie The Goonies hit the cinema screens. No less than six bonus features revive the hilariously funny plot where a band of adventurous kids fight against a mighty property company to defend their neighborhood from being replaced with a country club.
Wild Bazaar | Netent
Welcome to the Wild Bazaar, a place filled with the scent of spices, colorful fabrics and bric-a-brac as well as traders and buyers haggling for the best price. Score treasure chests on the reels to activate four different wild reel modifiers to take home huge wins well in excess of 1,000x your bet in a Wild Spins bonus feature. Scoring a win with any of the chest symbols will trigger one of four bonus features, each with its own reel modifier or a win multiplier. The amount of triggering chests in the winning combination will determine the number of free spins awarded. Multiple features can be triggered and retriggered indefinitely.
The Red Chests will activate stacked wilds, adding stacks of four wild symbols to all reels. The Blue Chests will add similarly 2×2 colossal wilds to the reels. The Purple Chests will trigger linked wilds where the leftmost and rightmost wilds appearing on the same horizontal row transform all symbols between them into wilds. The Green Chests can be triggered once only in the bonus feature and will award a 2x multiplier for the remainder of the free spins.
Dinosaur Kingdom | Merkur Gaming
A Jurassic park comes alive on the five reels and 20 pay lines of Dinosaur Kingdom. Merkur Gaming, which is known for rather simple but highly volatile slots with huge win potential, has gone all out to include four-reel random reel modifiers and a free spins round that can activate up to three game windows with a win potential of up to 3,000x the stake on a single spin.
The random features can be triggered on any spin in the base game and free spins. Tyrannosaurus Wilds will appear from any of the four corners to add a 2×2 wild symbol to the triggering corner. Pteranodon Wilds will turn reel three into a wild reel. Dino Shield Wilds is a cross-like wild symbol appearing centered either on the front or back three reels. Fortress Wilds is a 3×3 mega wild symbol covering all positions on reel three, four and five.
Scatters on reels one, three and five will trigger 10 free spins with up to three game windows spinning independently. The feature will start with only the main game window being active. Retriggering the free spins once will activate window two, while a second retrigger will activate the third window. Wins are paid for all winning combos on all active game windows.
Shadow State | Red7 Mobile
Fancy a trip down history lane? Then Shadow State is the right choice. Red7, a subsidiary of Scientific Games, takes us back to the prohibition era with a 5×3 game grid and a whole array of random and bonus features as the police hunt down the bootleggers and criminal gangs.
A typical car used by gangs in that era can appear in the background to award the Drive-By Wilds random feature. The car will stop and the gangsters will start shooting at the game grid. Every hit will turn the symbol into a wild symbol. Persisting Wilds can be triggered on any spin. Four respins are awarded with wilds randomly replacing other symbols and staying sticky for the rest of the respins. The Drive-By bonus upgrade will randomly award the missing bonus scatter if only two land on a spin. Detective Officer Picker is a pick-and-click bonus game with a range of clues that contain coin wins or free spins.
Bonus Bar Free Spins are awarded for three scatters on reels one, three, and five or via the bonus game. Initially, eight free spins are played with a 2x multiplier. Collecting evidence symbols will increase the multiplier to up to 10x and add more free spins.
The Goonies | Blueprint Gaming
Chances are that everyone has seen the kids’ comedy The Goonies, which was a box-office hit in 1985. A band of youngsters face a mighty property developer who wants to turn their neighborhood into a country club for the rich. To rescue their homes, they set out on a treasure hunt after finding an old pirate map in the attic. Blueprint has brought their adventures onto the set of five slot reels with 20 fixed pay lines and tons of action.
One-Eyed Willy’s Riches is randomly triggered on any spin, awarding one of six random features. Truffle Shuffle Wilds, Mikey’s Hidden Riches, Data’s Colossal Symbols, Mouth’s Lucky Coins, One-Eyed Willy’s Bonus Boost, or Sloth’s Win Spin. And that is just for starters. Hitting a minimum three bonus scatter will activate the One-Eyed Willy’s Bonus Wheel with no less than six options for the bonus round. In ascending order of win potential, they are Fratelli Hideout, Skeleton Organ, Super Sloth Free Spins, Goonies Go Wild Free Spins, Inferno Free Spins, and One-Eyed Willy’s Treasure Bonus. Lower bonus features can be gambled to upgrade them to a higher-value feature.