Great Game Serengeti

Great Game Serengeti: Slot Overview

Cock that rifle, players, we're heading outdoors with software provider Hacksaw Gaming to fire off a few virtual rounds in the online slot Great Game Serengeti. If you've been following the studio's journey through the wilderness, you'll know this is an offshoot of its previous hunting-themed release Great Game Rockies. At first, it might look like we've got a reskin on our hands. However, Great Game Serengeti avoids this label by employing a few technical changes and introducing a new Stampede Reveal feature. Target shooting remains the key endeavour, though, so there'll still be bullets a-plenty, with luck, on this khaki-d wander through the savannah.

The great African outdoors is a popular slot spot, and Hacksaw Gaming's graphics folk have produced a handsome version of it. The base game landscape blazes at dawn or dusk; it's hard to tell the time precisely, while bonus rounds flip through various times of the day. A rifle-wielding hunter surveys the scene - it's the same Rockies guy by the looks, he's just changed his shirt and trousers, and he occasionally fires off a few rounds at the targets sitting above the reels. His aim is about as good as it was before, meaning expect some misses to go with the hits. Great Game Serengeti doesn't put much onto the screen that experienced gamblers won't have seen before on past occasions, Mega Moolah or Great Rhino Megaways for instance, but what's here is nice to look at and listen to.

Great Game Serengeti isn't a total copy of Great Game Rockies; one or two changes have been made. The RTP, for one thing, has dropped ever so slightly to 96.29%, though the volatility has remained at the 3 out of 5 medium rating. Many betting levels are on offer from $/€0.10 to $/€200 per spin, while the action is carried out on a 5x3 grid with a lot fewer paylines, 9 of them in fact, down from 17 in the previous Great Game.

The symbol hierarchy is made up of low-pay J-A royals, then ostriches, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, and lions. Landing a 5 OAK low-pay win is worth 1x the bet, or a 5 OAK high-pay combination awards 3x-25x the bet. Wild symbols may appear on any reel. Wilds substitute all paying symbols and also pay 25x if five of them make a winning line.

Great Game Serengeti: Slot Features

Along with the ammo, khaki, and binoculars, there is a Hunting Season Coin sequence, Stampede Reveals, three bonus rounds - Khaki Quest, Roaring Reign, and Zebrawl, plus feature buys.

Hunting Season

When a Hunting Season symbol lands, a Hunt is triggered after any regular wins have been evaluated. A target sits above each reel, and 5 shots are fired from left to right that either hit or miss targets. If there is any animal symbol on a reel below a hit target, it is transformed into a Coin or Trap symbol. Animal symbols display between 1 and 4 Stars, which determine prize values. Animals with 1, 2, or 3 Stars award a minimum of Bronze, Silver, or Gold Coins, respectively. Animals with 4 Stars transform into a Trap symbol with a minimum value equal to Gold Coins. Bronze Coins have a value of 0.2x-1x, Silver 2x-5x, Gold 10x-50x, and Diamond 100x-500x.

A Trap symbol collects the values of all Coins and other Trap symbols, adding the values to itself. All collected symbols retain their values when collected by a Trap. If a wild symbol is present on a shot target reel, it gets a multiplier of x2-x20. After Coins and Trap symbols have been collected, each wild multiplier multiplies 1 to 5 Coin and Trap symbols.

Stampede Reveal

There is a chance during a spin that a Stampede Reveal will trigger before symbols land. When this occurs, a Hunting Season symbol is guaranteed to land, and no low-pay symbols will appear.

Khaki Quest Bonus Game

Hitting 3 scatters in the base game triggers Khaki Quest and 8 free spins. This feature keeps the main game mechanics but has a higher chance of landing Hunting Season symbols. In Khaki Quest and Roaring Reign, landing 2 or 3 scatters awards an extra +2 or +4 free spins, respectively.

Roaring Reign Bonus Game

Landing 4 scatters in the base game triggers 10 free Roaring Reign spins, which keep the base game mechanics, but Stampede Reveals do not trigger randomly. Instead, a Lion Bar appears by the reels. The Lion Bar increases by one step for each low-pay symbol on a reel hit during a Hunt. When the Lion Bar has increased 10 steps, a Stampede Reveal is triggered on the next spin. This resets the Lion Bar before the next free spin. Any Lion Bar progression past the amount needed to trigger Stampede Reveal is added to the Lion Bar when it has been reset.

Zebrawl Hidden Epic Bonus

The hidden Zebrawl bonus and 10 free spins are awarded by landing 5 scatters in the base game. This bonus has the mechanics of Roaring Reign, while also landing a Hunting Season symbol on each spin.

Feature Buys

Activating BonusHunt FeatureSpins costs 2x to make each spin 3 times more likely to trigger a bonus round. Hunting Season FeatureSpins cost 50x to guarantee a Hunting Season symbol lands, while Big Five FeatureSpins cost 100x to guarantee a Stampede Reveal. Khaki Quest may be bought for 60x, or Roaring Reign for 200x the stake.

Great Game Serengeti: Slot Verdict

Those who feel like Hacksaw Gaming's once everlasting spring of creativity is slowly drying up to be replaced by a corporate push for a greater quantity of lesser releases are hardly going to change their mind after playing Great Game Serengeti. The original version didn't receive a massive score, and Great Game Serengeti struggles to really flip that assessment. However, it has brought with it some new things, though the main gaming component remains Hunting Season symbol-triggered shootouts, where the hunter guy takes pot shots at targets, causing animals on lucky reels to dish out Coins or Traps. That part plays out in a similar way to its predecessor, though it has been amplified in some ways by Great Game Serengeti's new feature.

That new feature is the Stampede Reveal, and it is an addition that has made the game more exciting when it's working. The reactions to it are mixed when it comes to regular wins, since while it is possible to stampede your way to a screen covered with animal symbols, there are nearly half the number of paylines in this version, which sort of just balances things out rather than makes premium line wins a big deal. This might also have something to do with Great Game Serengeti possessing the same 5,000x win cap as before, too. However, once the shooting starts, clearing low-pay symbols from the reels means more animal symbols to Coin or Trap conversions, potentially, which is the Great Game duo's main attraction, keeping in mind the previous star progression system has been removed.

It stands to reason that anyone who got a kick out of Great Game Rockies should fall for this Serengeti update equally hard. Perhaps even more so, due to the possibilities of converting animal symbols over the entire grid brought about by the Stampede Reveal and Lion Bar features. Great Game Serengeti might be the ultimate African adventure, spying all Big Five animals through a pair of binoculars, or convert those who did not fall for the previous version to the ways of the gun, but it does manage to build on its predecessor in a fairly interesting way.