Microgaming Releases Innovative Anderthals™ Online Slot
JustForTheWin’s Anderthals, released in April 2020 with Microgaming, is a video slot built around a prehistoric cave-era adventure. Its layout features 40 pay-lines across 5x4 reels, along with a new trigger for its features.
Anderthals imagines a prehistoric world where cavemen and cavewomen might have shared the landscape with dinosaurs. The reels are led by cave-dwelling hosts Andy and Annie Anderthal, whose ancient surroundings have been brought to desktop and mobile screens.
Bright artwork and frequent animation give the game a lively presentation, backed by energetic spins and a jaunty theme tune. Its play includes stacked standard symbols and wilds, expanding wild reels, free spins, spin-bet multipliers and wild-symbol multipliers. The features are activated through a mechanic the game calls ‘feature symbols’.
Rather than relying on scatter and bonus symbols to launch fixed features, Anderthals uses ‘feature symbols’ to determine what appears when the trigger lands. The mechanic is straightforward to follow, while leaving the resulting feature uncertain from spin to spin.
Five spaces above the reels serve as ‘feature spots’. Their symbols rotate during a spin before settling on possible awards from the game’s feature set. Since the outcome is not apparent beforehand, players cannot know which feature will be selected.
The ‘feature spots’ may show any of these outcomes:
- Multipliers of 1x or 2x the total spin bet
- Free spins
- Wilds that expand
- Extra wilds placed on the reels
- Wild-symbol multipliers of x2 and x3
- Respins
The symbols displayed in the ‘feature spots’ can shift after each spin, but an award requires 2 ‘feature symbols’ to land on the reels together. When that trigger occurs, the features shown above the reels take effect. For instance, a 2x bet multiplier above reel 2 alongside an expanding wild above reel 5 doubles the spin bet and turns every position on reel 5 into wild symbols, before a re-spin follows.
Among the stacked symbols, Mr and Mrs Andethal—the hosts of this stone-age setting—rank as the third and fourth highest-paying symbols. A completed combination awards 5x the spin bet; with one of the slot’s x3 multiplying wild symbols, that figure could reach 15x.
The dinosaur wild and Anderthals logo are the title’s highest-value symbols. Either can pair with the other along any a pay line for a 8x spin-bet multiplier, with a wild multiplier potentially lifting the amount to 24x.
Microgaming has explored new slot mechanics with Anderthals, combining its ‘feature symbols’ and ‘feature spots’ in a design intended to add variety to the provider’s catalogue. The prehistoric theme, varied wild effects and unpredictable feature selection shape the game’s distinctive approach.
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