Pacific Gold

Pacific Gold: Slot Overview

It's always an exciting moment when ELK Studios drops another 'Gold' game, and one of the first questions is, where is Kane now? Going off past adventures doesn't really help because there is no rhyme or reason as to where he might end up. From the Louisiana bayous to the mountains of Katmandu, one of the joys of the range is tripping somewhere you rarely see in an online slot. A sense of adventure fills Pacific Gold, as Kane seems to have ended up in a watery junkyard for World War 2 era aeroplanes. Interweaving the ghostly undertones are a stack of features, a dynamic reel set, and plenty else besides to uncover; shall we?

An odd vibe pervades Pacific Gold, and it might be hard to find your footing in the beginning. There's a conflict between the foreboding background visuals and the colourful symbols landing on the reels. This initial mismatch was a little off-putting at first, though once the game found its stride and began showcasing what it could do, the jarring feels faded into the background to join the heavy, menacing (in a good way) soundtrack. Pacific Gold didn't have the immediate grab of, say, Zulu Gold, yet it gnaws away at you like a rusty fuselage, submerging you in its strange, exotic world.

Pacific Gold is playable on any device, offering stakes of 20 p/c at the lower end, rising to $/€100 for deeper-pocketed explorers. It's as highly volatile as any other Gold slot that's come our way and has an RTP value of 95%, whether you play in regular mode or when the X-iter bonus mode is active.

Hit spin and symbols drop to create a 6-reel, 4-row game grid providing 4,096 ways to win. or 262,144 at most when fully expanded as you will see. Should at least three matching symbols land in adjacent reels from the left side, a win is formed, and the Avalanche feature is triggered. Twelve regular pay symbols appear in the game. The first four are low-value 10-A royals worth 0.3x the bet for six of a kind, then four colourful mid pay icons worth 1x the bet for a line of six. At the top of the paytable are three mask-like symbols and Kane as the four premiums, paying a prize worth 2-5x the bet for six of a kind. To finish up this section is the wild symbol which replaces any regular pay tile and lands naturally or may be created by certain features.

Pacific Gold: Slot Features

The wild creating feature is called Pacific Wave, which is joined by Avalanches, Ghost Boxes, Power Stacks, Big Symbols, Free Drops, and five X-iter game modes.

Avalanches

All winning combinations explode off the board, and the empty spaces are filled with new symbols. In addition, another row is added to the grid. If another win forms, then the Avalanche process repeats. The grid can grow to a maximum of 8 rows high, creating up to 262,144 ways to win at this height.

Big Symbols

All low, mid, high, or wild symbols come in four different sizes. Normal 1x1, Super 2x2, Mega 3x3, and Epic 4x4. Larger symbols count as the number of 1x1 tiles that would make them up. Empty spaces appearing below big symbols are filled with 1x1 sized symbols of the same type.

Power Stacks

These are 1x1 sized symbols that represent a stack of 4 identical symbols. For each Avalanche a Power Stack symbol is not part of, its value increases by +2.

Pacific Wave

The Pacific Wave is a horizontal stack of identical pay symbols, 1x2, 1x3, or 1x4 in size. If empty spaces appear beneath a Pacific Wave, it fills them with 1x1 wild symbols. Pacific Waves are removed by the Avalanche feature if part of a win.

Ghost Boxes

Any winning symbols are collected by a Ghost Box symbol if one is in view. Big symbols are broken down and collected in their 1x1 size. When no more wins occur, the box explodes, removing a number of symbols from the grid. Collected symbols are then distributed row by row, starting with the symbol type with the greatest amount.

Pacific Wave Free Drops

Landing 3, 4, 5, or 6 bonus symbols gets you 10, 15, 20, or 25 free drops, respectively. In free drops, the safety level moves up one row for each free drop that produces a win – up to 8 rows high. Each new free drop starts at the active safety level for the rest of the feature.

X-iter Mode

Paying extra lets you access bonus modes from the X-iter menu. There are five options to choose from:

• Big Symbol – 5x the bet to buy 1 drop with a guaranteed big symbol.
• Pacific Wave – 10x the bet for 1 drop with a guaranteed Pacific Wave.
• Ghost Box – 25x the bet for 1 drop with a guaranteed Ghost Box.
• Bonus – 100x the bet guarantees a game round that triggers the free drops bonus round.
• Super Bonus – 500x to bet to buy a game round that triggers free drops bonus round with a persistent Ghost Box appearing on the first free drop.

Pacific Gold: Slot Verdict

Chalk up another highly playable romp with action hero Kane and his expanding reel antics. While the bones of the game are recognisable, and Pacific Gold does everything the Gold range is famous for – Avalanches, building rows, adding ways, and a dank atmosphere, ELK has evolved the series with some expertly crafted new features. Just when you wonder what else the studio could come up with to entertain players, they pull out a bunch of new extras to renew the Kane experience. There are several of these in Pacific Gold, which didn't lay out the warmest greeting to begin with, but slow burned nicely before unleashing some intricately good gaming on its growing grid.

The interplay of features is as good in Pacific Gold as it has been in any other Gold game. The new bits, specifically the Ghost Box and Pacific Wave, cleverly fit the regular Gold mechanics like a glove. They don't always do what you want them to; hey, that's life, but they can be pretty nifty when they do. Trap a Pacific Wave on one of the upper rows, and you can get some handy wild symbol refills as the spaces beneath are filled by them. The same goes for the Ghost Box. It can be slightly confusing the first few times these things hit. The concept is straightforward, yet trying to predict what will happen when the collected symbols are added back to the reels is tricky, and at times, thrilling. Expanding the safety level to its maximum height in free drops and triggering either of these two features can be a right old laugh. One standout being the final spin of the Super Bonus when the Ghost Box lets loose its collected symbols. On the subject of laughing, payouts in Pacific Gold are capped at 10,000x the bet, putting it in the upper tier of Gold games in terms of potential.

All up, Pacific Gold is another solid as steel addition to the Kane led bunch of slots. The theme might not be as immersive as some Gold games have been, but all in all, any complaints evaporate when the features pop like they can do when the going is good in Pacific Gold.