Brazil Pokies
The wildlife and native tribes of the Amazon are the stars of Brazil, an online pokie from Aristocrat that plays out over 5 reels and has 20 fixed paylines to bet on. It’s a reasonably attractive game which comes complete with a couple of simple bonus features that shouldn’t put off anyone new to playing pokies while still having enough winning chances to bring in people who are experienced at them.
Like all games from Aristocrat, it’s fair, reliable and has a decent return to player ratio which should prevent the reels from spinning over and over too many times before a winning combination lands across them.
Brazil is a beautiful country so it’s only appropriate that a pokie named after it should look good, but this one has somewhat average looks, with an abstract backdrop image of jungle trees and leaves, which is enough to set the tone without distracting players from what’s happening on the actual reels.
Off to the Amazon
Those reels are fairly plain in the design and presentation, with a simple black border to them and the payline indicators running down either side. Below them is the control panel where wagers can be set from just 20 coins and the amount raised as required to suit the budget, plus there is an Autospin option for those who want to just sit back and watch things happen without having to click each and every time the reels spin.
Winning combinations come when at least 3 matching symbols stop across a line on adjacent reels, with the start of the line needing to be on the left side, although the scatter symbol pays when it lands in any 3 or more positions. Regular wins are multiples of the coin value and scatter wins are multiples of the total bet per spin.
Aristocrat like to include some standard playing card symbols in most of their games and this one has the usual collection of colourful 9, 10, J, Q and K symbols making up the lower value wins. They may pay less, but these are the ones that players will see most frequently, so they are important, with the 9 being worth 5, 10 or 50 coins when landing on 3, 4 or 5 reels on a line and the K valued at 15, 40 or 80.
To win more, players will be looking to land the unique picture symbols that give this game its own distinctive style. Most of these are well-presented images of wildlife, with a butterfly, crocodile and jaguar making up the bulk of the standard icons, but there’s a tribesman in there as well, although he has a very blank expression and doesn’t look very happy about being included.
Still, there’s some nice wins of up to 250 coins when the picture symbols land and even more are possible when the wild and scatter bonus symbols turn up.
Brazil
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Bonus Features
The wild is a bright parrot who will substitute for any standard symbol if it can complete winning combinations, but as it only appears on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5, it can’t make up a line on its own, so will often turn up and do nothing more than add some colour to the reels.
A big green fish is the scatter icon, rewarding players with wins of 2x, 10x or 50x their stake when it flops onto any 3, 4 or 5 spots at once. As an added extra it then launches a free spins bonus game, with an initial 5 games playing out.
This doesn’t sound like much, but during this round the butterfly becomes an extra wild symbol, helping to complete even more winning lines, while the amount won is repeated by however many butterflies appeared. They don’t even need to have helped to complete a line, so if 4 were visible on the reels when a winning spin occurred, the value of that win is multiplied by 4x and so on.
If 3 or more fish symbols land during the free games, the round is re-triggered, which could be useful with only 5 spins in which to get the bonus wins.
The Verdict
Brazil is a nice enough game but not one that really stands out much. A fairly plain design is only partly off-set by the nice pictures of the people and wildlife of the Amazon and the bonus round may have some decent features, the fact that so few spins are available sort of defeats the object.
But it’s not all bad, and in fact there’s not much wrong with it other than those minor points. Basic gameplay should see lots of winning lines created, so if the theme appeals, players should give the Brazil pokie a chance.