Picking a theme and a storyline for a video slot can be a pretty challenging task for developers, most interesting topics have been already covered and fascinating characters are difficult to create.
The folks at Mascot Gaming did live up to that challenge as they came up with a creative concept for Gems Grow, avoiding the usual ideas that we can find in several video slots these days.
Theme
The idea of the game is that you are placed in a magical place way up into the mountains, a special place where gems just grow out of the earth! Your mission is to collect those gems while enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful mountain peaks that can be seen in the background.
Such a beautiful setting would have deserved some good music but unfortunately that is not the case here, the tune that plays in the background is extremely repetitive and can get annoying in just a few minutes.
There are four types of gems featured in this slot, and they represent the most valuable symbols in the paytable.
Betting Options and Functions
This slot has 5 reels and 3 rows, with 243 ways to win. The number of bet ways can increase, but we’ll get into that later. You get some cash whenever you have three matching symbols anywhere on adjacent reels, but the combination has to start on the leftmost reel.
The game has medium volatility, and the return to player is a solid 96.7%, a fair bit above the industry average. This product was developed using HTML 5, so it should be fully compatible with any mobile device.
Features
The idyllic atmosphere that can be enjoyed up in the mountains can get a bit more lively when the special features come into play:
- Wild Symbol
The Four-Leaf Clover is the Wild symbol in this game, and it will help you form winning combinations by substituting for any of the other icons in the paytable.
- Free Respins
These respins can happen quite often during gameplay, because you get one of them every time you land a Scatter symbol anywhere on the reels. Moreover, if you land two Scatters the number of free respins increases to 2 and the three central reels expand to four rows each, increasing the number of bet ways to 576!
The best thing about this feature is that it can be retriggered, if you get another Scatter there will be another free respin available!
- Free Spins
When you land 3 Scatters the whole thing goes up a notch, the reels transform into a diamond shape that offers 720 pay ways!
And that’s not all!
During the three free spins all values on the pay table are tripled!
If you are lucky enough to get a combination of 4 Scatters you will enjoy even more free spins, 4 of them, and the reels will expand even further to accommodate 2,000 pay ways! Moreover, all the prizes on the pay table will be multiplied by 4.
The biggest gem you can stumble upon in this game is when you land 5 Scatters, that will give you 4 Free Spins but the reels will transform to a 5x5 setup with no less than 3,125 pay ways! The multiplier will go up as well, all prizes will be 5 times bigger!
Conclusion
Gems Grow is a creative little game from Mascot Gaming, they have imagined a magic place where precious stones rise from the earth and it ended up being as fascinating as it sounds. Their goal of providing innovative features has surely been reached with this title.
It is true that the background music is a bit disappointing, but the graphics are enjoyable despite having quite simple symbols. The whole atmosphere that the game creates is entertaining, and once you get the taste of those free spins with transforming reels it might get addictive as well.
Video Slot game data and features
- 5Reels
- 3125Pay lines
- $200.00Max cash jackpot
- 96.7Payout Percent
- YesWild Symbol
- YesMultiplier
- $0.25 - $50Betting Range
- 0.01 - 2.0Coin bet range
- 1Coins per line
- NoProgressive
- 100Max coins jackpot
- 3125Max coins
- YesScatter Symbol
- YesFree spins available
- YesBonus Game
- NoBuy feature
- Gems & Jewels Game theme
- Medium Volatility