Crazy Goose Pokie Machine
It’s time for some farmyard fun in Ainsworth Gamings’ Crazy Goose pokie that has various animals on the 5 reels, overseen by cartoon birds who trigger some nice bonus rounds like free spins with multipliers and a giant wild symbol that can lead to several payouts in one spin.
Ainsworth have a lot of experience in the development of high quality pokies, with their games being featured at land based and online casinos across the world, and Crazy Goose adds to their collection of humorous titles that don’t take themselves too seriously, but can deliver some serious rewards when the right symbols fall into place.
Those cartoon geese are flapping around a big red barn that sits above the reels, which are made to look like bales of straw and that eagle-eyed players will notice come in an unusual format.
Running from the left side, reels 1 and 2 present 3 rows of symbols, while reels 3, 4 and 5 have their symbols over 4 rows, a layout that becomes particularly useful when giant wild symbols land, but also one which makes it easier to line up winning combinations across the 100 paylines that fill this game.
Players have the option to activate any number of lines, although wins will become more frequent with a higher number in play and come whenever 3 or more of the same symbol stop across an active line on adjacent reels.
The way that symbols are laid out makes it easier to hit these combinations, as 100 lines across the first 2 of them should see quite a lot of matching symbols, which then only have to line up with 1 more on reel 3 to equal a winning spin.
Crazy Goose
Unable to connect to MySQL: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory
Playing Crazy Goose
The basic playing card symbols 9, 10, J, Q, K, and A are here to make up the lower value wins in Crazy Goose, and it seems a pity that Ainsworth haven’t made them look a bit more farm-like, particularly as they have other pokies with a similar theme where these symbols are made to look like corn, or strawberries for example.
But once the frequent wins from these symbols start to fall into place it won’t matter so much. Bigger wins come from the symbols of various farm animals, such as a dog, rooster, goat and pig, each of which makes their own noise when they make up a winning line.
While these are all nice enough symbols, they have been designed to look realistic and don’t match the cartoon style of the goose, but again, this isn’t the end of the world and players won’t mind getting the higher payouts that come with the animals.
Barnyard Bonuses
The Crazy Goose logo is a wild, replacing all but the scatter to create winning lines, although it only appears on reels 2 through to 5, so can’t make up a line on its own. It can be stacked several high on a reel though, resulting in more chances to complete a line or more with each spin.
Triggering the Mega Goose feature could lead to some big rewards, with all of reels 3, 4 and 5 becoming a single giant wild symbol. Any matching symbols on reels 1 and 2 therefore, will be enough to create 5 of a kind lines for the biggest possible wins.
A basket of golden eggs is a scatter symbol which hatches open a free spins round whenever it lands in any 3 or more places at once, with an initial award of 9 games. Players will be able to feather their nests quite nicely in this round, as it’s got the goose, whomoves across and down the reels throughout, transforming into other high value symbols along the way.
On the last spin, players can be given a 2x or 3x multiplier on any wins made during the free games and if players see the Spin Again symbol appear, they get a further 6 spins where the high value animals replace the goose.
The Verdict
Crazy Goose has some definite plus points but also a couple of negatives. The way reels are arranged over 3 or 4 rows should lead to plenty of winning spins as symbols line up over the 100 paylines, although it makes the minimum stake to activate all of the game 1.00, which could be too much for some players on smaller budgets.
The design is generally good, but perhaps more could have been done to make the symbols fit into a single theme, however, once the bonus features come into play, all should be forgiven, as the giant wilds, stacked wilds and free spins with transforming symbols can lead to some big prizes.