Ice Dice Pokie Machine
A pokie called Ice Dice is only going to be about one thing, and yes, the Ice Dice video pokie from EGT has symbols made up of dice encased in blocks of ice. There’s no particularly good reason for this other than to give it a snappy rhyming title, but it looks good, has some nice animations when winning symbols thaw out and there’s even a cute cartoon penguin skating around the reels.
While most wins will occur when 3 or more matching symbols stop across any of the 20 paylines, Ice Dice comes with a couple of bonus features, such as wild substitutions, a free spins game with extra winning potential, plus the gamble option and Jackpot Cards progressive round that are common to all games from this reliable developer of online casino games.
It’s got a standard 5-reel layout, where symbols are in 3 rows and because all 20 paylines are permanently active, the low limit stake is 0.20, although anyone unsure about placing real money bets on a new game can usually find free Ice Dice video pokies to practice on.
Playing Ice Dice
Cool blues dominate the colour scheme of the game, and there’s ice everywhere, from the big block behind the reels, to the game title above them. Of course, all the dice symbols are frozen solid, but we can still clearly see their various colours and a review of the pay table tells players what each is worth.
Light blue, purple, red and green dice are all worth the same, returning 5, 20 or 100x the line bet when the matching ones land across 3, 4 or 5 reels of a payline. The dark blue and beige-coloured dice are both valued at 10, 25 or 150x the line bet, and the high paying dice are numbered 7, 8 and 9. The 9 will see winnings of 20, 50 or 500x the line bet paid out when it stops on 3, 4 or 5 reels at a time, but even this is topped by the wild symbol.
The wild is a white dice with a Chinese letter on it, and it’s worth 50, 200 or the best awards of 1000x the line bet, but it’s also the wild symbol in this game, substituting for all but the scatter if it can then complete a winning set of matching symbols. To help out in this mission, it will be stacked on any reel, potentially completing multiple lines at once, and any time it makes up part of a win by substituting, the cartoon penguins turn up and do a little dance, or play with a goldish or get up to other tricks depending on what symbols made up the win.
Ice Dice
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Free Spins
The scatter symbol only lands on the middle reel, but can fill it up and trigger a free spins game. Just 3 spins are initially awarded, but even though this is a small number, each scatter will expand to the left and right before turning into wild symbols. This can leave all of the middle reels filled with wilds, guaranteeing that each of the 3 spins is a multiple winner. Because they are so rewarding, the spins can’t be retriggered from within, so once the 3 are done, players go back to the main game.
Other Features
EGT online pokies all have a couple of features in common, and while the Jackpot Cards round is a fairly rare occurrence, the gamble feature game can be played after any win of 700 coins or below. The aim is to correctly time a click on red or black buttons while a playing card rapidly switches between the 2 colours. Getting it right doubles the prize, which can either be collected, or players can keep going, up to 5 times for a potentially big payout at the end. Getting it wrong at any point loses the gamble along with the triggering bet.
Above the reels, players will have noticed the Club, Diamond, Heart and Spade symbols attached to rising progressive jackpots. If the Jackpot Cards round is triggered, they will be shown 12 face-down cards and will need to click on them one at a time, revealing the suits. Once 3 of the same suit have been found, the corresponding jackpot is awarded, and the beauty of this game is that once triggered, a prize is guaranteed.
The Verdict
EGT seem to specialize in dice-based online casino pokie machines, and Ice Dice is a good example with a couple of nice twists. The free spins are guaranteed to pay out prizes, so even though there’s just 3 of them, it’s better than having 10 or more and possibly not winning anything, although players should be wary of the gamble games, as these can be tricky to win.