Life’s a Beach is a holiday themed slot machine, designed by Microgaming and offering its players lots of tropical island inspired graphics, all of them very appealing for someone that hasn’t take a vacation recently. Whether you want Bora Bora style huts that are on stilts above the ocean, nice beaches, scuba diving or just easy access to a beach bar, the game offers it all in a cartoonish style that makes it fun to play on.
The slot has a big enough top jackpot that it could allow you to actually move to a tropical island for a couple of years, with $120,000 being the most you can take home if you place bets on its 20 lines. This game, with 5 reels, has on them scatters and wilds, with a bonus game that can be triggered.
Features of Life’s a Beach
You might not get free spins in this game, but you do have the usual wilds and scatters, plus a bonus game. Since the multipliers are missing as well, it feels like it’s not as good in this area like other slots.
First of all, we have the Beach Babe, an important ingredient on any nice beach. This is the wild symbol, and it’s another disappointment, mostly because it is limited to three reels out of five. Only the 2nd, 3rd and 4th reels can get the wild feature, so it isn’t the kind that will also award the top jackpot. The only role played by the wild in this game is that of the substitute symbol, capable of taking the place of regular symbols when forming new combinations. The scattered Lifeguard is not influenced by the wild’s appearance.
The Lifeguard is the scatter feature, and this is the truly interesting part of the game. It can give away prizes whenever it appears, and it also triggers the bonus game. The prizes start at 2x the bet value, reaching a maximum of 150x when all five symbols are on the reels. Their position is not important, the scatter’s ability being its power to create combinations with symbols that aren’t on the same payline.
Bonus Game
You also have a bonus game in Life’s a Beach, one that gets started whenever 3 or more Lifeguards are present in the same round. The next step involves the appearance of six Umbrellas on the beach, out of which you pick four.
It’s an easy enough bonus game, which either gives you a Bikini Babe when you pick an Umbrella, or it gives you nothing and the feature ends. If a Babe is found, a prize is awarded, with a random value. If nothing is found, the feature ends, and you get a consolation prize worth double the bet value.
Betting options and jackpots
There is quite a bit of a range when it comes to betting, as you can use 1 to 400 coins, depending on how many lines you want active (1 to 20) and how many coins you want to use on each one (1 to 20 again). The value of the coin is also left up to you, the range being $0.01 to $0.50. That means that you can bet up to $200 per spin, in case you weren’t keeping count.
The game promises a top reward of 12,000x, giving you up to 240,000 coins, or $120,000 cash.
Design and symbols
The holiday theme is quite often appealing in these slots, and Life’s a Beach is no exception. The drawing style is a bit more cartoonish than I would’ve liked, but that doesn’t take away that much from the appeal of the slot. Even the playing cards look like they were written in the sand, and they do their part in making the game look good.
Symbols: Beach Babe (wild), Lifeguard (150x wager, scatter), Beach Bar (12,000x), Umbrella (1,000x), Radio (500x), Glasses (500x), Ace (300x), King (300x), Queen (150x), Jack (150x), 10 (100x) and 9 (100x).
Is It Worth Playing?
The design should be good enough to make the slot worth playing on those merits alone, but it has a big prize that you can go after as well, so I’d recommend you try it.
The Life’s a Beach slot machine is offered through the Microgaming platform, so if you want to play it for real or just to practice, look out for casinos that use it.
