Pandemic Rising

Pandemic Rising: Slot Overview

Editor's note: This review is based on an early access version of the game. We may update the review after the full release if necessary.

Cast your mind back to 2019-2020-ish when the COVID-19 hysteria was in full swing, touching nearly every country in the world. Is it too soon to revisit an event that inflicted such a deep and lasting wound in humanity's collective consciousness? Not according to software provider Pragmatic Play, which has gone and designed Pandemic Rising, an online slot that examines global catastrophes of the biological kind, and poses a question: What's the next one going to be like?

If COVID-19 originated in bats, as some say, it would appear the sickness in Pandemic Rising might somehow be linked to our monkey brothers and sisters. Or is it something else, or is it completely fabricated altogether? One of Pandemic Rising's character symbols displays the word 'Conspiracy!' as if the global illness is orchestrated by a powerful shadow group, with the aim of tightening its grip on the world population. If it's near impossible to know precisely what's going on deep behind the scenes, who can really tell who or what is actually pulling the strings? Either way, it's safe to say that Pandemic Rising shares some similarities with Nolimit City's xWays Hoarder slots, both in theme and design, though where Nolimit approached the subject with a heavy dose of dark humor and satire, Pragmatic has opted for a more serious interpretation,

The pandemic in this instance spreads across a 5x4 gaming area with 40 paylines evaluating winning combinations. A highly volatile math model runs things behind the scenes, generating an RTP of 96.51% when betting $/€0.20 to $/€240 per spin, though lower return models are something to keep an eye out for. Gamblers also get two ante bets to choose from if they wish. Ante Bet 1 costs 4x the bet to make the chance of triggering free spins close to 10 times higher, while Ante Bet 2 costs 10x the bet and lands at least 1 wild symbol on each spin with a random multiplier.

Winning combinations begin on the leftmost reels, and there are 11 paying symbols. They are 10-A card royals, and five character high pays. A 5 OAK line of royals is worth 1x to 1.5x the bet, whereas a line of 5 matching premium symbols puts 2.5x to 20x the bet in your pocket.

Pandemic Rising: Slot Features

The pandemic in this game rises through its wild multipliers, free spins with an increasing general multiplier and sticky wilds, as well as feature buys.

Wild Multipliers

Wild symbols substitute for all paying symbols and land on the middle three reels. When a wild hits, it can carry a multiplier of x1 to x10, which applies to all wins that pass through it. If more wilds are part of the same winning combination, their multipliers add to each other.

Free Spins

The bonus scatter appears on the leftmost, middle, and rightmost reels. Players win 8 free spins and 2x their bet when 3 scatters land in view. During free spins, all wilds that hit remain on the reels until the end of the feature. The round also benefits from a general multiplier that applies to all wins, starting at x1 and may be increased by collecting Virus symbols.

The Virus symbol only appears in free spins, and is collected when it hits. A meter outside the grid keeps track of the collection progress. The meter starts on x1 and increases at set intervals up to x100. Every 3 Virus symbols collected moves the general multiplier to the next level and awards +1 free spin. Multiplier meter progress is also represented by a change in the appearance of the premium pay symbols.

Feature Buy

The free spins round can be bought from the base game for 100x the bet. Paying 500x the bet triggers super free spins, guaranteeing to land 2 wilds in random positions with random multipliers at the start of the round.

Pandemic Rising: Slot Verdict

The pandemic might invoke all sorts of thoughts and feelings from sadness and dread in some people, to joy at working from home and not having to interact with the public in others. On the whole, Pragmatic Play's Pandemic Rising triggered positive reactions. It ain't no gene-spliced cure for all ailments, but there is good stuff here to mask up and have a spin for. The studio has dealt with the pandemic theme in an interesting way, hinting at the conspiracy and non-human species angles without going overboard, while a quasi-futuristic atmosphere raised hopes that if another pandemic does occur, it happens in a future where we are masters of microbes.

Mastering Pandemic Rising means hitting as many wild symbols as possible, both for their substitution abilities as well as their multiplicative ones. The base game drops them as bait, before free spins really develop the idea, though maybe not in ways completely unseen before. Sticky wilds are fairly common in the slot world, though pairing them with multipliers is the icing on the cake. If you like this sort of thing, there are a number of good alternatives, from Relax Gaming's Top Dawg$, Hacksaw Gaming's Ultimate Slot of America, to Prag's own slot, The Dog House. The point is that there's a range of sticky wild multiplier slots to choose from. Pandemic Rising boosts its powers of seduction by splicing on a meter of multipliers that can be increased up to x100 by landing Virus symbols no less, neatly tying the theme and mechanics together.

Not only that, but Pandemic Rising's system is good for bashing out wins up to a 14,000x the bet win cap. It means that players excited by sticky wild multiplier mechanics get a fairly strong option to choose from in Pandemic Rising, unless the thought of masks, social distancing, and texting the government to let them know you're going for a walk outside your house triggers all sorts of negative flashbacks.