African Legends

African Legends: Overview

Microgaming partners Slingshot Studios throw their hat into the jackpot arena with their Africa themed slot African Legends. Despite a bunch of familiar looks and features, there is really only one reason why you’d want to spin this one. That is the progressive Wow Major Jackpot, which starts at a $/€50,000 and continues to rise until a lucky punter hits the big one. Just how you can win is tied directly to the game’s features, so let’s take a look.

The game takes place at the top of a mountain range, looking over the vast wilderness of Africa. Behind the 5-reel, 243 win ways game area, a fertile valley lays spread out, full of grasslands, trees, rivers, and clouds about to pop with rain. It’s an impressive site, slightly different from what players usually get when spinning in this part of the world. There are no sunsets, sunrises, and very few animal references. There is a familiar soundtrack though, a rhythmical drum beat which does the job in a fairly nondescript way.

African Legends can be played on any device, offering bets of 25 p/c to $/€25 per spin. Keeping jackpot chasers pumped while they spin for the big payday is a relatively high hit rate of 37.16%, which means you can expect frequent low to medium wins. Less exciting is an RTP rating of 94.92%, albeit not unusually low for a progressive jackpot slot. It does feel as though it’s working with the medium volatility against you after a while as the account slowly drains away alongside your hopes of the Wow Major.

The reels are familiar, having a strong Gonzo's Quest look about them. Thick rock-cut symbols, 4 low pay and 5 high pay make up the regulars. Low pays are the card suits, diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades, all carved from weighty stone. Then, the high pays consist of beasts from the African countryside such as warthogs, hippos, rhinos, elephants, and lions. Slingshot has presented the animals in an interesting way, like those close up black and white headshots of famous people. Land five premiums in a row for a payout of 3.2 to 6 times the stake.

The golden statue wilds are worth a bit more at 10 times the stake for five of a kind. Wilds can substitute for any other symbol in the game and may land stacked on the third reel.

African Legends: Features

There are plenty of features in African Legends to keep the game moving along. Don’t expect novelty, all have appeared before, in one guise or another. We get Microgaming's trademarked Rolling Reels along with Wild Blasts, Multiplier Trails, Free Spins, and of course, the Progressive Jackpot Bonus.

The Wild Blast feature triggers completely at random during the base game. When active, up to 5 positions turn wild. The Wild Blast does not trigger during or at the end of a Rolling Reels sequence.

Rolling Reels are triggered after every win in the base or bonus game. Winning symbols are removed, making way for new symbols to fall into the gaps. This can lead to consecutive winning combinations from a single spin, as long as winners continue to land. Consecutive wins also increase the Multiplier Trail. The first roll in a sequence awards an x2 multiplier, while roll 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 awards a multiplier of x3, x4, x5, x6, x8, and x10 respectively

In addition, 4 or more rolls award free spins with a set multiplier (it will not increase during the round as it does in the base game). The exact reward depends on the number of rolls:

• 4 rolls = 12 free spins plus an x5 multiplier.
• 5 rolls = 15 free spins plus an x6 multiplier.
• 6 rolls = 18 free spins plus an x8 multiplier.
• 7 rolls = 20 free spins plus an x10 multiplier.

Should 8 consecutive rolls occur, players win the progressive jackpot. High rollers take note, the bigger your bet, the higher your chance of winning the jackpot.

African Legends: Verdict

African Legends has playable moments when Rolling Reels and Multipliers combine. Yet, it’s the Wow Major Jackpot providing the bulk of the allure. Remove the chance of winning €50,000+ on any spin and what’s leftover makes for dismal reading. RTP is low, though not obscenely so for a progressive jackpot. So is the non-jackpot potential for winning though. Without the Wow Major, the most you can hope for is 1,200 times your stake. That’s less than a third of what its cousin Jungle Jim offers.

So what about jackpot chasers? Well, if you’re okay with all of that, then yeah sure, why not. From an aesthetic standpoint, African Legends is nice to look at and Rolling Reels in combination with Multiplier Trails is a well proven concept by now. Of course, beauty is only skin deep, but it does help. The hit frequency is high enough to keep your spirits up for a while, even if the bankroll steadily chips away on the chase. There’s always the Wild Blast, popping up the odd win here and there, though it doesn’t do near enough to stem the steady downward creep.

All up, African Legends is a game which looks nice but can be painful to play. Unless you’ve set yourself a personal mission to track down the Wow Major Jackpot no matter what, there aren’t many other reasons for braving the African sun.