Roaming Reels Pokies
Lions, emus and zebras stare out at players from the Roaming Reels pokie, all helping to land some of the bigger wins possible in this safari-themed game from Aussie developer Ainsworth.They roam across 5 reels with symbols arranged in 3 rows, while a substantial 100 paylines can be activated, which could lead to multiple wins in a single spin.
This attractive pokiecomes with some simple bonus features like wild and scatter wins, plus there’s a free spins game with some extra surprises in store that can lead to some nice payouts. But this isn’t a complicated game so it’s ideal for anyone new to playing pokies, while there’s enough to keep more experienced players entertained as well.
Roaming To The Game
Few games have such detailed symbols as the ones found in Roaming Reels, with each animal symbol looking almost photo-realistic. Behind them is a background image of the African plains at sunset, nicely rendered to look out of focus, while below the game there’s some control buttons used to determine the stake.
This can range from just 0.01 per spin, but as this will only activate 1 of the 100 lines, it’s more common for players to get all of them in use for a minimum stake of 1.00. This can then be adjusted up to a maximum of 75.00, or anywhere in between to suit the budget.
An Autoplay option sets the reels spinning on their own for up to 100x, stopping at pre-set loss or win levels that the players can adjust to suit.
While the animal symbols may look very nice, the playing card icons 10, J, Q, K and A are more familiar, as Ainsworth use them in just about every game they produce. But they are quite colourful and these are the symbols that are likely to bring in the more frequent winning combinations, with 3, 4 or 5 of them on adjacent reels across an active line running left to right being enough to get a prize.
The playing cards each pay 5x, 50x or 100x the amount bet per line when 3, 4 or 5 land, so it’s the animal symbols that players will really want to see, as these look more interesting and pay out more.
The lion has left a paw print that’s worth the same as a playing card, but then in order of value, we have an antelope, the emu and zebra, topped off by a picture of the African continent that’s worth 20x, 100x or 1,000x the line bet.
Roaming Reels
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Bonus Features
Like most pokies, Roaming Reels has a few bonus symbols and the majestic lion is given the mane, (sorry), job of acting as the wild. This means that he will substitute for other standard symbols to help complete winning combinations when he lands on the middle 3 reels and to make it even easier for him, the wild will be stacked across the whole of any reel he appears on.
It’s quite possible to get all of the middle 3 reels filled with wilds, meaning that whatever symbols are on reel 1 will then become 4 of a kind winning lines for multiple payouts of big prizes.
He can’t substitute for the scatter however, as this has other duties. This symbol is represented by a tree, with a setting sun behind it, and whenever it lands in any 3, 4 or 5 positions at once, without needing to be on a line, players win 2x, 10x or 100x their total stake per spin respectively.
There’s also 8 free spins when 3 scatter appear, while 4 of them triggers 12 spins and if 5 scatters land at once, players are awarded 20 free games. If the tree appears again in any 3 or more spots during this round, a further 5 spins are added to the end of the current games.
To help make the bonus games a bit more rewarding, the wild symbol moves from the middle 3 reels to reels 1, 3 and 5, which makes it easier for it to complete lines, while the paw print will be stacked on the reels and is worth a bit more.
The Verdict
Although Roaming Reels doesn’t have much in the way of innovative features, the symbols, extra games and attractive design should be more than enough to stop people roaming away from it after just a few spins.
Added attractions include some nice animations, with the lion roaring when he completes a line for example, plus like other Ainsworth games, this one has some realistic sound effects made to give the impression that these are mechanical reels, not software-based ones.