Spirit of the Beast

Spirit of the Beast: Slot Overview

Developer Relax Gaming gets in touch with their inner guide for a trip to the North American wilderness in Spirit of the Beast. A spirit guide is a benevolent being from the etheric realm that helps or protects the living, often appearing in an animal form. Native Americans developed a relationship with the beasts in their environment over thousands of years of meaningful interactions. What the elders of yore would have thought of using them to theme online slots is anyone's guess. But here we are, and amongst wild beasts, you'll find free spins, a Summoner feature, and Mighty Multipliers.

What hits the screen when Spirit of the Beast loads is a view that must have enchanted European explorers (or invaders, depending on your view) when they landed in America. Charming wigwams line a pristine lake, no doubt bulging with fish, amidst lush grasslands and majestic mountains. No wonder the colonists wanted to get their hands on what must have been a vast open arcadia compared to the grit and grime of the overcrowded old world. A gentle panpipe piece completes the scene, and it's hard to know whether to hit the spin button or start meditating.

If you decide upon the former, bets from 10 p/c to £/€80 per spin may be set on any device. At odds with the relaxing scene is a highly volatile math model producing an RTP value of 96.52%. At least, this is the default value. If you engage the feature buy, then RTP rises to 96.71% and sends you straight to free spins, where symbol collections can lead to sizeable wins.

The reel setup is pretty straightforward, utilising a 5x3 sized game grid along with 15 fixed paylines. You'll score a payout when 3 or more matching symbols land left to right across one of the paylines, starting at the leftmost reel. Beasts rule the paytable, appearing as high-pay wolves, horses, eagles, bears, and bison - worth a win of 10 to 20 times the bet for 5 of a kind. On the low-pay side is a bunch of plain card suits printed on some sort of Native American screen. Finally, the golden totem wild symbol is desirable for more reasons than one. For now, it substitutes all pay symbols when evaluating line wins.

Spirit of the Beast: Slot Features

Two extras have been added to Spirit of the Beast to create its more exciting moments – a Spirit Summoner Feature and Mighty Multiplier Free Spins. The Spirit Summoner may be awarded at random at the start of any spin. When activated, one high-pay symbol is arbitrarily selected to become stacked on the reels, and all other high pay symbols are removed. This gives players the chance to land full-screen wins of premiums symbols.

Scatter symbols are present only on the 3 middle reels, and when 3 are in view, 12 free spins are awarded. Lining the top of the reels in free spins are 6 multiplier meters corresponding to the wild and the high-pay symbols. When a stack of high-pay symbols lands to cover all positions on a reel, it is collected and stored on its respective meter. When 5 stacks of the same symbol have landed, the multiplier displayed is awarded. The multiplier values are x20, x50, x100, x300, x1,000, or x10,000 for collecting wolves, horses, eagles, bears, bison, or wilds. If a scatter symbol lands during the feature, +1 spin is awarded.

Depending on the country of residence, players may have access to a bonus buy button located on a drum to the left of the screen. Hit this to dole out 70x the total stake for 3 scatter symbols to land on the next spin.

Spirit of the Beast: Slot Verdict

Spirit of the Beast is like the slot version of kicking back with a peace pipe at the end of a long day of fishing, tending crops, and weaving, to contemplate the meaning of life. The game has one great thing going for it - collecting wild stacks in free spins for a 10,000x the bet win. Since the majority of its goodness is condensed into one thing, for most of the time Spirit of the Beast is a real laid back, take it easy type of experience - until you trigger the bonus, that is.

Potential is high, but only if you collect wilds in the Mighty Multiplier feature. 1,000x from the bison wouldn't be bad either, but outside those two, there is a major drop off in values making it hard to get ahead in Spirit of the Beast without them. In fact, outside free spins, Spirit of the Beast isn't exactly bursting with life. A low number of paylines plus low-value symbols don't exactly add up to a thrill fest. The Summoner feature tries hard with what it has, but even the dream scenario of filling the screen in bison is only worth a so-so 300x the bet.

Some players have postulated that Relax Gaming has an A team cranking out mind-bending hits while a backup B team fires off the odd filler slot to make up numbers. Spirit of the Beast sits in the middle of these two extremes. It's not a Relax Gaming classic, yet there is a purpose. It might be a good choice for players looking to get a little reflective in a pleasant environment, perhaps. Encounter Spirit of the Beast on a day when your guide is guiding, then you'll be laughing, but almost everything hinges on getting one thing right in free spins.