Giraffalot

Giraffalot: Slot Overview

In those darker moments, it can be easy to bemoan online gambling's lack of originality and the abundance of cheaply made, creatively bankrupt titles. Obviously, it's not all doom and gloom - far from it. Thanks to clever software providers like ELK Studios, letting its creative team do what it does best, gamblers also have a wide range of excitingly original options to choose from. When it comes to online slot Giraffalot, the developer has cooked up a wondrous animal-populated game world for players to lose themselves in while spinning for wilds of the expanding, multiplying, and spreading variety.

Much like its unusual-sounding name, Giraffalot also looks like no other slot out there. Its surreal fantasy realm is populated by anthropomorphic animals, strange colours, and bizarre plant life. A medieval flavour is mixed in, and the intricately designed skin is fun to let your eyes run over. When the base game is active, players can explore a salmon coloured plain, with gnarled trees with salmon coloured leaves, backgrounded by greeny blue skies and a towering fortress settlement - the giraffe version of Camelot, presumably. Trigger free spins, and the dream world wisps into a mountainous region with boats wrecked atop mountain peaks. It's sort of Aesop's Fables, Puss in Boots, The Tale of Despereaux, or something like that, all very pleasing on the eye, and stirringly chivalric.

Giraffalot's gaming area is a 5x4 matrix with 26 paylines awarding wins when 3 or more matching symbols land left to right from the leftmost reel. Gamblers are able to stake $/€0.20 to $/€100 per spin, and have access to five X-iter feature buys. Either way, it's played, the RTP is 94%, and a medium-high math model runs the action.

Flowy J-A card ranks are the low pay symbols, awarding 1.5x the bet when 5 of them land in a combination. Above them in value are four animal symbols which pay 2x to 10x the bet for a 5 OAK winning line.

Giraffalot: Slot Features

Wilds are instrumental to Giraffalot, and there are various types of them. Respins are a possibility, as are free spins, super free spins, and feature buys.

Wild Symbols

Wild symbols replace any regular pay symbols, and a winning combination of five wilds pays 25x the bet. When Expanding Wilds land, they grow to cover the entire reel and award a respin. During respins, all wilds and scatters are sticky. Landing a new Expanding Wild on a respin grants an extra respin. Expanding Wilds may also include a multiplier which boosts wins they are part of.

Spreading Wilds may land on the middle reel. When activated, they either convert one high pay symbol type to wilds, increase multipliers on already converted wilds, or increase the multiplier of an expanded Expanding Wild. They may retrigger in the same round, and they reactivate during respins. If a wild created by a Spreading Wild is present on the same reel as an Expanding Wild when it expands, the entire reel becomes wild, and the combined multiplier from all wilds on the reel applies to wins involving those wilds.

Super Spin

The Super Spin may activate at the start of a spin or respin, removing all low pay symbols for that spin.

Free Spins

Hitting 3 scatters triggers 5 free spins. During the feature, Expanding Wilds can land on all reels except the middle reel, and respins trigger as in the base game. Scatters do not appear during free spins. Triggering the feature with 2 scatters and a super scatter awards 5 super free spins which guarantee 1 to 4 Expanding Wilds on each spin.

X-iter

The Bonus Hunt feature buy costs 2.5x the bet to get a spin with more than 4 times the chance of triggering a bonus or super bonus round. At 5x the bet, the Mega Bonus Hunt buys a spin with more than 10 times the chance of triggering a bonus or super bonus. Magic Spin, which guarantees 2 expanding wilds, costs 50x, while the bonus or super bonus costs 100x to 500x, respectively.

Giraffalot: Slot Verdict

ELK Studios' Giraffalot is the sort of slot which reminds us that novelty is still a thing when developers are willing to explore their more creative side. Starting with the title, Giraffalot positions itself as something a bit different, and the playful spirit carries on throughout the rest of the presentation. In fact, its surreal fantasy landscape, part medieval animalistic Camelot, part fairytale dreamscape, is one of the game's strongest elements. The landscape is fleshed out by a set of anthropomorphic animals to produce a visual experience unlike any other. Like smelling salts for dazed athletes, a look over Giraffalot is an ideal antidote for gamblers fed up with genericism.

Giraffalot's features might not be as fantastical as its skin, but what it has in the tool kit can be quite potent. The gameplay leans heavily on wild symbols, and these are present in several forms, from expanding to spreading to multiplying. One thing that provides extra vitality is the respin component, since all wilds are sticky when they're respinning through. The Super Spin feature is of interest, as well, because in a game with so many full reel wild possibilities, clearing low pays from view, increasing the chance of hitting high pays, is a good thing. Expanding Wilds seemed to be the most frequent of the wilds, as were those with multiplier values, though Spreading Wilds triggered often enough to make themselves useful.

All in all, Giraffalot is a well designed slot, but comes across as more of a curiosity than a must-play. The unusual visuals help it stand out and the 10,000x potential is decent, yet underneath the surface, the gameplay is fairly standard, making this a slot that may amuse for a while without leaving a lasting impression.