Circle of Life

Circle of Life: Slot Overview

Whatever happens once we shuffle off this mortal coil, who can say, but it's a sad fact that the bodies we currently inhabit won't be around forever. Perhaps we can take solace in our participation in the circle of life, then, the continuous natural cycle in which living things are born, grow, die, and ultimately give rise to new life. An eternal rhythm in which every beginning blooms from an ending, and every ending feeds a new beginning. Apologies if this is getting a bit heavy, but such were the thoughts kicked into life by developer Hacksaw Gaming's release Circle of Life, an online slot dealing with heavier-than-usual subject matter, and a game that sits on the same family tree as the studio's previous release, Life and Death.

Like its predecessor, Circle of Life is a mostly monochrome affair that saves brighter colours for its growing Tree of Life feature. Less colour does mean greater seriousness, though, and Circle of Life is not one to choose when players are in the mood for mundane, jolly, gambling. However, everything that Hacksaw Gaming has placed on the screen is well designed, from the faceless entities on either side of the grid, which crumble to skeletons and back, to the tree imagery in the background. Circle of Life is very thoughtfully designed to not only provoke adrenal stabs when it takes off, but to get the mental cogitation ticking over during the down times.

Watering this metaphorical garden of life means choosing a stake of $/€0.10 to $/€50 per spin, with four feature buys available. This is a highly volatile slot, where of the four RTP configurations, 96.33% is the highest. Played on a 5x4 matrix, there are 14 paylines in place for evaluating winning combinations.

Landing across the gaming area are 10-A card ranks paying 1x the bet for a 5 OAK combination, and five intricate, theme-based premium symbols, worth up to 2x to 5x the bet. Wilds appear on all reels, substituting all regular paying symbols, and awarding 5x if five of them create a combination.

Circle of Life: Slot Features

Circle of Life sows its reels with Tree of Life symbols, the Circle of Life, three bonus rounds - Origin, Eternal, and Rebirth, as well as feature buys.

Tree of Life

Tree symbols are wild, and they reveal an additive multiplier of x2 to x100. Multipliers apply to the payout value when part of a win, and multiple wilds in the same win add their values together. If a Tree symbol is part of a win, a respin is triggered, and the Tree expands into a Tree of Life. Winning Tree symbols stick to the grid for the respin and expand upward by one row. Respins continue when new wins occur on the Tree of Life or other Tree symbols. The Tree of Life continues to expand by one row on each respin sequence. If a Tree of Life is fully expanded, it is removed on the next respin or spin.

Circle of Life

When a Tree of Life fully expands from the bottom row to the top row, the Circle of Life triggers on it, activating during the respin before the grid settles. The Circle of Life spins to land on a multiplier or a Skull. The multiplier is combined with the Tree of Life, and can add x2 to x100 or multiply it by x2. The Circle of Life will continue to spin, applying values, until it lands on a Skull, ending the sequence.

Spreading FS Symbols

When 3 or more FS scatters land, each one of them expands across the entire reel it landed on after wins have paid. Each position the FS symbol covers displays a number of free spins, and the total is added up and awarded. Values can be +1, +2, or +3. When triggering or buying a bonus, there is a chance FS symbols transform into Upgrade symbols, upgrading players to a higher bonus. Landing 3 scatters with 1 Upgrade awards Eternal, whereas 3 scatters with 2 Upgrades or 4 scatters with 1 Upgrade awards Rebirth.

Free Spins

• Origin Bonus Game - 3 expanding FS symbols trigger this feature. It keeps the base game mechanics, plus, when a Tree is part of a win, the Tree of Life is sticky on the next free spin, and remains sticky until it is no longer part of a win. A fully expanded Tree of Life is removed for the next free spin. Respins do not trigger. In the two lower bonus games, landing FS symbols awards extra free spins, +4 to +12 each.
• Eternal Bonus Game - 4 landed FS scatters trigger this round. On top of Origin's mechanics, a reel becomes activated when a Circle of Life triggers on it. The reel stays active till the end of the round, and guarantees a Tree symbol lands on each spin, unless it already has a Tree or a Tree of Life.
• Rebirth Hidden Epic Bonus - Landing 5 FS scatters unlocks the hidden epic bonus round. It keeps the mechanics of Rebirth while activating reels 2 and 4 from the start.

Feature Buy

Circle of Life's feature buy section has four choices. They are BonusHunt FeatureSpins at 5x, making each spin 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game (the game sheet says 10 times more likely), and Life or Death FeatureSpins at 70x to buy a spin that guarantees at least 2 Tree symbols land. Origin costs 100x to buy, while Eternal can be bought for 300x the bet.

Circle of Life: Slot Verdict

Circle of Life is a Hacksaw Gaming release which meshes mechanics and mood into an inseparable mix where gameplay doesn't just sit on top of the theme but melds with it. This means it probably isn't the ideal sort of slot to idly spin to fulfil a craving for bright, mindless entertainment. Instead, Circle of Life deals out tension, anticipation, and waters an oddly morbid fascination with watching something bloom, crumble and begin again. Like Life and Death, Circle of Life deserves credit for stepping away from the neon-lit slot world. The stark visuals, decaying figures, and bursts of colour from the growing trees create an atmosphere that is contemplative, eerie, as well as sort of strangely beautiful. It's a game which makes you want to think as much as hit spin.

The Tree of Life feature is the beating heart of the game, and when it takes root and grows, the grid shakes off its monochrome melancholy to come alive with extra possibilities. This effect is seriously increased when more than one Tree of Life is working together, and their multipliers combine. We've seen the expanding, multiplying setup a lot from Hacksaw Gaming, and while some may feel like they're chewing on the ashes of repetition, it is a deadly mechanic when one spark becomes a blaze, before becoming a full-on inferno of expanding Trees and escalating multipliers. Another potent effect is the Circle of Life. If it can avoid landing on the Skull segment for a while, it's capable of spinning out significant multiplier values. Spreading FS symbols is a relatively novel move for Hacksaw Gaming, and this trigger method was capable of awarding a lot of free spins.

Like its deathly cousin, Circle of Life possesses winning potential of 15,000x the bet, achievable in all game modes. Despite connections, Circle of Life is its own game, yet it's a more traditionally expanding wild multiplier Hacksaw Gaming slot, though there are respins, the Circle of Life, and spreading scatters thrown in. So, while it might not be a clear-cut better title than Life and Death, Circle of Life is good, and potentially capable of bringing a flagging bankroll back to life when it's blooming.