Jurassic Park is the kind of title that you know exactly what it’s about the moment you hear its name, or when you first look at it. The reason is that it’s a game themed around the 1993 movie with the same name, using even photos of the actors from that first movie from the franchise, the one that started all this madness with the cloned dinosaurs. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park made huge waves at the time of the release, but it continues to do so even today, with the fourth movie of the series being released in 2015, while the fifth one is supposed to be launched in 2018. The developer that got the license to create a slot machine based on this movie is Microgaming, and they did an excellent job with it.
An impressive slot machine, Jurassic Park offers you no less than 243 paylines, or ways to win as they call them. The game has the usual 5 reels, but the features are different, including besides the stacked wild the T-Rex Alert and some free spins with about five types of wild features. You only win up to $1,500 in the best case scenario, but you get a lot of chances to get paid.
Features of Jurassic Park
You will get plenty of fun things to take advantage of in Jurassic Park. I’ll start with the 243 ways to win, but then you will get on the reels stacked wild symbols, a T-Rex that makes appearances and is incredibly profitable, plus a scatter symbol that can trigger five different types of free spins, each one with their own advantages and cool features.
The ways to win are simple enough to figure out. Instead of having paylines with predetermined paths, where symbols have to appear on adjacent reels and in certain positions, you only need to get symbols from left to right, but they don’t have to be on paylines anymore. The simple fact that they’re on neighboring reels is enough now to get you a new combination. The wins come a lot more often, so naturally the payouts are not as impressive, but in the long run it can still be a profitable slot.
One of my favorite features in any game is the wild symbol, especially in a title like this one, where these symbols appear stacked. The ways to win already improve your chances to create new combinations and get paid, but when you add stacked wilds as well to the equation, you get a slot that can be incredibly profitable with a bit of luck. These wilds come stacked only in the base game.
T-Rex Alert
A T-Rex sighting can sometimes occur while you’re playing the game, and when that happens you go into Alert Mode. You get even more chances to take home prizes when this happens, with an additional 35 wilds being added to the reels, so the chances of getting these symbols go up. This happens for the next 6 spins, which you still have to pay for, but at least you know that they have better odds than usual. The wild symbols that are added are also stacked.
Free Games Feature
The game’s only scatter symbol is incredibly important here, triggering free spins of about five different types. The image used for the scatter is that of the amber with the mosquito trapped in it. In the movie, the scientists use the blood that the mosquito sucked from a dinosaur, to clone and recreate an entire collection of these monsters for the park. You get both regular scatter prizes, which multiply the total bet by up to 100x, and free spins.
The free spins need 3+ Amber symbols on the reels, in random positions since they’re scatters. There are five types of free spins, and you can choose the one you prefer once you’ve played the free spins a total of 25 times.
Tyrannosaurus Rex is the name of the first free spins feature. You receive 12 free games from it, with wild reels which are turned from regular ones by the appearance of a T-Rex. Up to 5 reels can become wild during one of these free spins, but it’s not a guaranteed thing. The T-Rex symbol appears stacked. The T-Rex spins can’t be triggered again.
Velociraptor is another type of free games. There are 12 of them offered, coming with both split wilds and multiplier wilds. The Velociraptor symbol is stacked for the duration of this feature. The split wild does just that, two wilds occupying the same spot on the reel when this happens, but counting as two symbols, so you get winning combinations easier. You can also get combinations of up to six symbols this way. The multiplier wild is also present, giving you 4x to 6x the usual prizes when it gets involved. Retriggering this type of feature isn’t possible.
Triceratops is the third feature on the list, with 12 free games and with Running Wilds. These wilds grow by one wild, the stack increasing in size for each round that passes. If a spin doesn’t bring a win, the wild stacks that don’t occupy a full reel will be nudged into place, so hopefully a payout will be offered eventually. You can’t retrigger this type of free spins.
Brachiosaurus is the fourth type of free spins. These 12 free games come with mystery multipliers, meaning that the wins will be worth 2x to 6x the usual amount, but you don’t know by how much beforehand, the number being chosen at random and offered for a random number of games. These free spins can be retriggered, the only ones that this is possible for.
Dilophosaurus is the fifth and final type of free spins. There are also 12 free spins here, and they benefit from the presence of Winning Wilds. Random symbols will become wilds and they will remain this way for as long as they contribute to new wins.
Betting options and jackpots
The bets are not very high, ranging from $0.30 to $15, using the equivalent of 30 lines and up to 10 coins for each one. These coins reach a top value of $0.05.
Since the wagers are quite low, the $1,500 jackpot is not that bad, meaning around 3,000 times the line bet.
Design and symbols
The game’s design is worthy of attention, the game being one of the slots released in the last couple of years. The quality is excellent for every single symbol that was used, and the same goes for the rest of the graphics. A moving image of the jungle is placed behind the reels, with the symbols being round and appearing to hang in mid-air. The reel borders or backgrounds are not visible in any way, so you can easily see the beautiful but dangerous forest. The symbols are a combination of dinosaurs and photos of the actors from the first Jurassic Park movie.
Symbols: Amber (scatter, 100x the bet), Logo (800x, wild), Dr. Alan Grant (400x), Laura Dern (350x), John Hammond (300x), Jeff Goldblum (250x), T-Rex (150x), Velociraptor (120x), Brachiosaurus (90x) Triceratops (75x), and Dilophosaurus (60x).
Is It Worth Playing?
It’s definitely worth trying out. It’s one of the more entertaining slots that you will find out there, and Microgaming did a great job with it. It might not pay a lot, but it’s a lot of fun.
Jurassic Park, the 1993 Film
A film that aired in 1993, Jurassic Park had Steven Spielberg as its director and inspiration for it came from a novel released in 1990, written by Michael Crichton. This is the first title from a series of films with a similar topic. It had a budget of $63 million, yet it managed to bring $1.029 billion at the box office, a huge success by any means. New movies in the series were later released, in 1997, 2001 and 2015, with a fifth title to be aired in 2018.
The action in the movie revolves around a wildlife parked inhabited by dinosaurs, which were cloned from blood retrieved from a mosquito trapped in a piece of amber.
You will find Jurassic Park at any online casino which chooses to use software from Microgaming, playable either for free or for real money.
