Untamed Giant Panda Pokies
Cute panda bears decorate the 5 reels of this popular Microgaming pokie that’s part of a series of wildlife inspired games, each of which has its own creature features. In this game, we see 2 different free spins rounds, scatter wins, wild substitutions and a gamble round where players get to decide how much risk they want to take.
While nature lovers will be the target audience for this pokie, the style and features should attract just about anyone who wants lots of variety in their games.
Pawsing for a Look
Like the others in this range, such as Untamed Crowned Eagle and Bengal Tiger, this game looks fantastic, with photo-realistic images throughout, both in the bamboo forest of the background and the images of cute pandas on the reels.
Subtle animations bring the game to life, with the bamboo swaying gently back and forth and the bears moving around a little bit when they become part of a winning line. These bears are the higher value symbols, but the smaller wins come from landing the ever-popular 10, J, Q, K and A icons, which have been designed to look as if they are carved from stone to help fit in with the theme.
Untamed Giant Panda has replaced conventional paylines with a 243 Ways to Win layout where winning combinations come from landing identical symbols on 3 or more adjacent reels running from the left side.
To determine the stake per spin, players should head to the control buttons below the reels, where they can place as little as 0.30 on each spin and then adjust the value of each coin up to 0.10 and have any number of coins from 1 to 15 in play. This leads to a maximum stake of 45.00 and to see how many coins are won for each winning line, there’s a payout table that lists each possible combination, while also detailing the bonus features.
Untamed Giant Panda
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A Forest of Extras
Apart from the nice design, it’s the bonuses that really make this game stand out, although they are similar to those found across the rest of the Untamed range, so anyone who prefers tigers, eagles or wolves to panda bears may prefer the others.
Below each of the reels, players will see 4 little boxes and these are part of an interesting Collect A Wild feature. The wild symbol is the Untamed Giant Panda logo and as well as paying out some big wins on its own, it will act as other base symbols if can create a winning combination.
Each time a wild appears on a reel, whether it substitutes for anything or not, 1 of the boxes below that reel will be filled in with a little wild symbol and once all 4 are filled, the reel will turn into wilds and 4 free spins will commence.
It’s not the only free spins round however, as an elaborately framed panda eye is a scatter symbol that can land in any positions to pay out 5x, 25x or even 250x the stake returned when 3, 4 or 5 appear at once.
Lucky Nudges are a useful addition that sees scatter symbols auto nudge into view, which makes getting 3 on the reels a little bit easier.
Any time 3 or more can be seen, they will also trigger 10 free spins during which any wilds that appear will stay locked in place for any remaining spins. This potentially makes the round more rewarding as it progresses, although this isn’t guaranteed.
Last but not least, we have a gamble round that can potentially multiply the value of any win several times over. Unlike many gambles which are simply 50/50 bets, this one can be adjusted to suit the amount of risk that a player wants to take by moving a needle around a dial. The less risk taken, the smaller the win if the gamble is a success and vice versa.
A winning gamble gives players the option to go again, over and over until the limit is reached, but a loss at any stage loses both the triggering bet and anything gained in the round so far.
Grin and Bear it?
Untamed Giant Panda has a great deal of visual impact as well as some pleasing bonus features to compliment the design. Things such as wild and scatter wins are fairly standard, but when the wilds trigger free spins on their own and the scatters can even nudge up from the top and bottom of the reels to launch another free spins game, you know this is a special pokie which has been developed with care.