Reel Thunder Pokie Machine
The slightly unusual theme of pigs on motorbikes is featured in Reel Thunder, and older pokie from Microgaming that gives its age away by the style of graphics and lack of any real bonus features. But that doesn’t mean a game about hogs on hogs should be boring, as this brightly coloured pokie spins up plenty of winning opportunities and comes with some fun images to keep players entertained along the way.
Roaring to the Reels
A simple style sees the 5 reels filling pretty much all of the screen, only leaving a bit of room to each side for the payline indicators that show where each of the 9 lines starts from the left side and finishes on the right.
As a little bit of an extra design feature, the reels are framed by motorbike chains and the title looks like it is zooming along the bottom of them. Underneath is a set of control buttons which allow players to adjust their bets from 0.25 a spin up to 90.00 or to set up an autoplay option which spins the reels for them, stopping at pre-set win or loss levels.
The simple payout table outlines how much is won, with prizes awarded whenever examples of a symbol come to rest on a payline. Unlike many games where playing card symbols make up the smaller wins, here we see that everything is related to the theme, starting with some different types of food that our piggy bikers like to trough on.
So there’s a stack of waffles, a tasty looking fry-up, hot dogs, fiery chillies and a cooling beer all paying out when landing in the right spots, while the higher value icons are largely made up of bits of motorbike. We see a speedo, license plate, silhouette of the hog against a flaming backdrop and the back wheel of his bike, while the highest value symbol is the pig dressed in some weird biker gear including a pointy German army helmet and shades.
Reel Thunder
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Biker Bonuses
There isn’t much in the way of bonus features in this game, but it’s not totally devoid of them, with wild wins created by the winged heart on an exhaust pipe symbol. It will substitute for any other symbol, with the exception of the scatter to help complete winning lines, although unlike in many other games, there’s no value to the wild on its own or any multiplier payouts when it makes a substitution.
The scatter symbol is a twin-vee bike engine and it’s got a couple of special attributes that can rev up the wins. Firstly, there’s no need for it to land in any particular positions, with just 3 scatters stopping anywhere in view being enough for a win, while the payout will be a multiple of the total amount staked per spin, not just the amount bet per line.
Three scatters wins 5x the bet, 4 scatters will pay 20x and if 5 of them land at once, players will be in for a payout equal to 50x the amount bet. But that’s all it does, as there are no bonus rounds to trigger in this game and in fact, no other extras at all.
The Verdict
Many players like simple games such as Reel Thunder, while many others are totally put off by them, so it all depends on whether you like bonus rounds or not. This pokie concentrates on spinning the reels and collecting whatever prizes are due when the right symbols land in the right spots. Apart from wild and scatter wins, there’s really nothing else to interrupt that process, which isn’t a criticism, just an observation that may appeal to many potential players.
The design isn’t spectacular, but pleasing enough, with a fun theme and some nicely presented symbols. Maybe the low value ones being made up of types of food is a little odd, and not necessarily in keeping with the theme, but it still looks quite effective and has helped to make Reel Thunder a fairly successful game for a number of years.