Soccer Safari takes the ever popular football theme and uses it in a game where the stars are wild animals that you would see during an African safari. With lions, tigers, elephants and wild boars among the players, the game looks like a lot of fun, especially since the graphics are just as good as the features are. It’s one of the Microgaming slots, and also one of the better looking titles in their collection.
There are 30 paylines in Soccer Safari, more than enough to give you a decent shot at the $24,000 top prize. Among the features offered by the game you will find wilds, scatters, bonus games and wild free spins.
Features of Soccer Safari
The wild symbols and the scatters are the features that you expect to see, and they’re present, but the game also offers wild free spins and a bonus game where you have to execute penalty shots.
You will notice that the Soccer Safari Logo is used by the game as a wild, meaning that it will often be part of paying combinations together with regular symbols. It does this by taking the same role as them, as long as it’s in the right place during that round. If arranged from left to right, with a minimum of three symbols, wilds create their own combos. Payouts reach a maximum of 2,000x with its direct help.
Wild Free Spins
These special spins are not that common, or at least I for one haven’t seen them used in slots before. They get started with the help of the scattered Referee symbol, which needs to be present on both the 1st and the 5th reels in the same round.
You get 5 spins for free from it, during which the first and the last reels are entirely wild. These remain locked in place, while the three reels from the middle spin a total of five times.
Go For Goal Bonus
The second scatter symbol has a Gold Trophy as its image. Between three and five will trigger this feature, while two or more give you prizes. The prizes are worth 1x the bet when two Trophies appear scattered, 2x for three, 20x for four and 200x the bet for five.
Once the bonus game starts, you get a chance to execute penalty shots. You choose the direction of the shots and you can win up to 60,000 coins if you’re lucky and you score.
Betting options and jackpots
The game permits you to cover anywhere between 1 and 30 lines, using 1 to 20 coins for each one. You also pick the denomination, which can be anywhere between $0.01 and $0.20. The maximum line bet goes up to $4, while for the slot it can be $120.
The slot’s most impressive prize is the one offered by five Trophy scatters, which will put in your pocket 200 times the bet. That means up to $24,000 cash, with the wagers going up to $120.
Design and symbols
The action of Soccer Safari takes place on a huge stadium, just like the real World Cup games. As I’ve said before, the wild animals all come from Africa, some of them being players, others spectators, cheerleaders or sports commentators. The quality is excellent, though perhaps there are a few too many characters crowded together on those reels.
Symbols: Gold Trophy (scatter, 200x the bet), Referee (scatter), Game Logo (wild, 2,000x), Lion (1,000x), Rhino (700x), Tiger (600x), Wild Boar (500x), Hyenas (200x), Buffalo (175x), Antelopes (150x), GOAL Fans (125x) and Commentators (100x).
Is It Worth Playing?
While soccer fans will not necessarily have a lot of fun playing this game, I think it’s got a much wider appeal than your regular sports themed slot machine. It has great graphics, some very interesting features and the prizes are at least decent when they’re at their highest.
Soccer Safari can be found at any Microgaming casino, where you get a chance to play it for real money or in free mode.
