Wild Orient is a game that Microgaming recently announced. The Wild Orient Launched on the Quickfire platform in March 2016. Wild Orient Launched with a theme inspired by wild animals. The symbols aren’t quite what you would expect as the designers made some interesting art choices.
There aren’t that many games to focus on the jungles of Asia though, most of them choosing Africa or South America. Here, the stars are the Panda Bears and the Elephants. There are 243 ways to win in Wild Orient, some very special features, and you can get paid up to $60,000 while playing it.
What We Love About the Wild Orient
One of the things I enjoyed immediately about this slot machine is its use of Panda Bears in its major symbols, along with other creatures from Asia. Elephants, monkeys, snakes, they’re all on the reels of this game, with bamboo trees in the background, an unusual look for a jungle if you’ve played other titles that focus on different forests of the world. The design is good enough in most areas, but fails miserably with its playing cards.
I also loved seeing the Respin feature in this game. It is used by Microgaming in a number of recent slot machines, and it allows players to respin a single reel. The other reels remain in place, and you pay a price and respin only the reel you need a symbol on.
If you get it, your gamble paid off. If you don’t get it, you lose the money used to trigger the Respin. Each reel has its own respin button, and depending on the possible outcomes the price underneath it can vary considerably. You can even respin the same reel multiple times.
The Respin feature is a lot of fun because it forces players to pay attention to the reels, while most games only require them to click on the Spin button.
Wild symbols are present as well, and naturally, they use the Wild Orient logo to represent them. These symbols substitute for the ones that are missing, but only if first, they land in the spot where they’re needed.
A scatter symbol, when appearing in a minimum of three locations, will trigger for the player a round of 15 free spins, for which all the wins are tripled in value, a 3x multiplier is applied.
What We Do Not Like
I’m not a fan of poker cards, and in 2016 I would’ve hoped for developers to give up using them, creating fun and themed symbols instead. Microgaming uses here standard looking poker cards, which are part of hundreds of other slots, and they’re just as boring there as they are here.
Worth Playing?
It should be a decent game from Microgaming, the way many of their titles are. The Respin feature is a big reason to give it a shot, to see what it’s like. The design is mostly on the average side, but it could’ve been above that line if they didn’t have those poker cards on the reels.
