Desert Shark Slot – Free Demo

Coins, Compasses and a golden W

Players discover a 5-reel, 4-row layout when the game opens. The grid carries 40 fixed paylines, and a win needs 3 or more matching symbols on a line starting from the leftmost reel.

Desert Shark provides stakes of 0.20 to 100 credits per spin, and the volatility is high, graded 5/6. Wins are fairly common though. They land on a better than 1 in 6 basis, or 19.58% to be precise, and RTP is listed too, at 96.33%. Over 490 test spins at a 10.00 stake, 81 paid something, which is 17%, and 36 of those paying spins returned less than the stake.

As to symbols, they begin with gold and purple coins. They are trailed by blue and red coins, jugs, bottles, compasses, camels, and princes, and landing five of a kind premium wins awards payouts of 2 - 5 times the bet. At the short end, a line of 3 Compasses pays 0.4x the bet and a line of 3 Princes pays 0.6x.

The wild turns up in two versions - a regular golden W wild, plus a golden shark Swim Wild - and the regular wild substitutes for any regular pay symbol to help build a combination. The golden W also pays as the highest symbol, returning 7.5x the bet for five on a line.

A shark that swims left along its row

Cramming in a base game feature and free spins, Desert Shark is not light on mechanics. The golden shark Swim Wild can land stacked.

Also in the base game, there's a possibility to land 2 or more Swim Wilds on reels 3-5. They swim left along their rows turning symbols wild, and wilds they reach come with multipliers of x2-x9, climbing by +1 with each additional hit. In testing, 2 Swim Wilds set off Swim Swim on spin 185, and that spin paid 860.00, or 86x the stake.

The Minty Breakdown: Free Spins paid 3,792 of the 6,093 credits my 490 spins won, and 2,980 of those came from the single round on spin 210, so the 124.3% return leans on one bonus far more than on the base game.

Dynamite on reels 1 to 3 for eight spins

To trigger the free spins round, land 3 scatter symbols on reels 2, 3 and 4. Across 490 spins the round arrived 3 times, on spins 210, 340 and 457.

The round comes with 8 free spins, and at the start of each spin, 1-6 Dynamite Wilds are placed on reels 1-3. They explode whenever a Swim Wild swims along their row. They turn 2-6 random symbols into wilds or wild multipliers up to x9, and a single Swim Wild is enough to trigger Swim Swim. In the first round Swim Swim went off on 2 of the free spins, and the round paid 2,980.00, or 298x the stake.

3,792 credits out of eight-spin bonuses

Speaking of the free spins, the way Dynamite Wilds and Swim Swim keep turning symbols into wild multipliers proved a powerful mix. The three rounds paid 3,792.00 between them, which was 62% of everything won in the session. Results were respectable during testing. They were overshadowed, though, by the stated max win of 16,794 times the bet. The session closed with the balance at 6,193.00 from a starting 5,000.00, a return of 124.3%.

It won't please everyone of course. The longest run without a win lasted 22 spins, and the balance dipped as low as 3,524.00 along the way.