Kitty Cabana Pokie Machine
We’ve already had the Hound Hotel pokie from Microgaming and now they have released Kitty Cabana which follows much the same theme of pets on vacation. So look out for Turtle Tavern, Mouse Motel and Guinea Pigs Digs coming out soon.
Just because it has copied a theme, doesn’t make it a bad pokie however, and players who prefer cats to dogs will be drawn to this game which has 5 reels, 25 win lines, an unusual Dashing Wilds feature and a free spins game with multipliers and special wilds to enjoy.
A look at the game sees the reels surrounded by the red-tiled roof of the cabana, with columns to either side and a view of the town behind. All 25 lines are permanently enabled, so the minimum wager is 0.25 per spin and players can adjust all the way up to the maximum of 1250.00 from there.
Symbols range from the traditional J, Q, K and A playing card icons, which are in the same style as many other Microgaming pokies, to images of the various cats that populate the cabana. There’s a total of 5 kitty characters including a bar tender, one reading a book, a sunbathing moggie and the highest value one is a grey cat relaxing in the hotel hot tub.
Each of these symbols will award a prize whenever 3 or more come to a rest across a payline, on adjacent reels running from the one on the left hand side, while wins are multiples of the amount staked per line.
Kitty Cabana
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Any symbols that are part of a winning line will celebrate by moving around a little which both looks nice and makes it clear how the winning combination runs across the reels.
The Kitty Cabana logo symbol is a stacked wild, meaning that several will appear on a reel at once, and can substitute for the basic symbols to help complete winning lines, or even several at once.
A nice feature is the Dashing Wilds that can randomly appear after any non-winning spin. Up to 3 extra wilds can zip onto the reels, and although a win isn’t guaranteed with this feature, players certainly stand a good chance of getting a prize payout where there wasn’t one before.
A sophisticated-looking barmaid is a scatter symbol and she’s the trigger to an outstanding bonus round where players get free spins, multipliers and special wild features. When she lands in 3, 4 or 5 spots anywhere on the reels, players will first receive a scatter win of 5x, 50x or 500x the total stake per spin, and then be taken to a view of 3 floors of the cabana, each with 4 doors on them.
The object is to pick a door on the bottom floor to reveal a special wild feature, pick a door on floor 2 which reveals a multiplier amount and then the last door on floor 3 shows how many free spins will then play out.
The special wild features are a real highlight, with several options like reels stacked with 20 wilds, so players are pretty much guaranteed that wilds will land on reels 2 and 4, or they could get the expanding wilds where any that appear will stretch across the reel.
Other special wilds include reels 1 and 5 being permanently wild throughout the free spins, or frozen wilds which stick in place for 3 spins before melting away, or can freeze whole reels for the remainder of the free games.
Split wilds are a unique feature, only shared with Hound Hotel, which sees random wild symbols divide into 2. This potentially creates a line of 6 symbols across 5 reels, and when this happens, the payouts are doubled from what they would have been for a 5 of a kind win.
The Verdict
Although Kitty Cabana borrows a theme and gameplay from Hound Hotel, it’s borrowed from a high quality game. The cat symbols are very nicely presented, and despite the usual playing card symbols being the same ones found in many other pokies from Microgaming, the whole game looks good.
Basic gameplay is fine, with smooth animations, and the stacked wilds can bring in some nice wins, while Dashing Wilds are a nice little extra.
The bonus rounds are excellent, and with some generous multipliers and wild features, once the free spins are triggered, players should be in for a few big rewards.