Safari Heat Slot – Free Demo

The Lion doubles what it completes

The Lion Wild doubles every combination it completes, and inside the 15 Free Games a x3 multiplier rides over the whole round. When I unearthed this animal-themed slot from June 2014, I didn't agree to review it because I assumed it was going to be splendid. I already had a hunch it wouldn't be. Panther Moon and Great Blue are two other Playtech titles. The balance I logged moved from 1,000.00 down to 777.40 over the session. I agreed because the theme itself might draw some curiosity, and after all, that's how I pick out slots to review since I can't possibly review them all.

A reel set with room around it

The first thing I noticed when starting up this slot is the somewhat peculiar design: the reel set is in the centre of the screen and a whole lot of room on the sides. The panel underneath reads a total bet of 3.00, made up of 15 lines at 0.20 a line. It appears needlessly tiny.

The arrangement is nothing out of the ordinary, as thrilling as it may appear to some. All 15 lines are in play on every spin, so the line bet is the total bet split 15 ways. This is a 5-reel, 3-row slot with 15 paylines, paying left to right. It arrives with one feature and I'll run through it. That feature is the Free Games round, and the trigger condition is 3 or more acacia tree Scatters anywhere on the reels.

Visually, it's rather middling. Alongside the Lion and the acacia tree the reels carry an elephant, a rhino, a flamingo, a zebra and a wildebeest above the card ranks. The theoretical RTP is 96.16%.

Ten thousand line bets for five Lions

Symbols on the reels include the Lion and the acacia tree, and the former is the most rewarding. It gives you 10,000 times the line bet for 5 on a payline, which amounts to 666.67 times the total bet in the base game. The Scatter is the only symbol that pays from anywhere rather than left to right. In the base game I caught two Lion Wilds side by side on reels one and two, worth 10.00 on a total bet of 3.00.

A wild symbol is also featured, depicted by the Lion. It substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter, and it also doubles the win it completes. That means a line of four high symbols finished off by a Lion returns double what the four would have paid on their own.

Only the highest win pays per line. At a 3.00 stake the line bet is 0.20, so every paytable entry has to be read against that rather than against the total bet. Payline wins are multiplied by the line bet.

Five rounds at 15 free games each

Now, landing the three acacia tree Scatters anywhere on the reels needed to trigger the feature is not simple, and it frequently took me a long stretch of spins — 93 of them at the worst — and this is what it deals: 15 free games with a x3 multiplier, retriggerable endlessly. More free games are won inside the feature itself, and across five rounds in 440 spins none of mine retriggered. 5 Lion Wilds under that multiplier are worth 2000 times the total bet. The five rounds landed on spins 91, 133, 201, 294 and 375, and paid 23.0x, 23.0x, 55.0x, 16.0x and 11.0x the stake.

Final Minty Score: The five Free Games rounds paid 384.00 of the 1,097.40 I won across 440 spins, and only the round on spin 201 cleared 30 times the stake. The rest came back in the base game, a line at a time.

What 440 spins returned

The animals are decent. The longest I went without a win was 11 spins, ending on spin 411.

Over 440 spins at a stake of 3.00 I wagered 1,320.00 and received 1,097.40 back, a return of 83.1%. The balance peaked at 1,078.30 on spin 203 and bottomed out at 776.80. Only 135 spins paid anything at all. Of those 135, 85 came back with less than the stake that bought them. The five Free Games rounds I triggered made up 35% of everything I won, and the best of them was worth 55 times the stake, so the payouts are thin.