At First Glance
Inspired by the new live-action Jungle Book film, Blueprint Gaming has produced a slot version of the story — Jungle Jackpots. The slot game is decorated with all of our beloved characters: Mowgli, Bagheera, Baloo and more. These characters aren’t just there to look pretty and stand around the reels. Each one of them is coupled with its own money-making feature in this slot! It’s rare for a slot game bring a well-known story and move to life so well.
Game Basics
The game features five reels and 20 fixed paylines. The reels are set in a book, after the original book by Rudyard Kipling, and is covered in familiar Jungle Book characters and references. Even the low-value symbols can provide a huge boost to your casino balance! Five fruit bowls multiply your line bet by 300x whereas Wild Footprints give you 500x! Bets start at 20p and can go up to a eye-watering £500 per spin, giving you lots of room to strategize, budget and shake up your gameplay.
There are three different types of Wilds symbols too; all of which can stand in place for other symbols and complete winning paylines. There’s Mowgli’s Wilds, in which the main character swings across the reels and turns random positions into wilds. Hathi, the Elephant spreads wilds out across four reels at a time and quadruples the likelihood of scoring winning paylines. Finally, the slithering snake, Kaa has Locking Wilds that stay in place for subsequent spins. Kaa will also ask you to pick one of three baskets. Pick wisely! These baskets reveal either “Spin”, “Extra Wilds” or “End”.
Finally, there’s the Monkey Mischief feature. When the reels are still, monkeys show up above the reels and pull up Stacked symbols over the reels. This fills an entire reel with the same symbol and again, multiply your chances of winning! You’d expect good payouts with so many different types of Wild symbols. However, the game is quite average in this respect. Its theoretical payout percentage is 95.63%.
Bonus Features
There are four bonus features created around the major characters in the Jungle Book story. My favourite character in The Jungle Book is Baloo, the friendly bumbling bear. In the Jungle Jackpots slot, Baloo has not one, but two features! In Baloo’s Cash Bonus, Baloo pushes the Golden Money tree to trigger a landslide of gold coins.
You’ll pick one of two signs in his paws. One sign will make Baloo push the tree again while another ends the game. There is up to 500x to be won here! Baloo’s Colossal Spins Bonus is all about extra spins. Elephants will walk across the screen and add extra spins to your counter. Baloo plays his role by adding 2×2 and 3×3 symbols that can create truly colossal wins!
Then, there’s Bagheera’s Extra Spins bonus. The feature starts with five extra spins. Then, Bagheera triggers additional extra spins for as long as you can hold a winning streak. On top of that, the panther also covers the whole of reel 3 with the winning symbols to increase your chance of winning again.
The fourth and most profitable feature is Mowgli’s Cash Trail Bonus. Your aim is for Mowgli to swing further and further up the tree until he reaches the Golden Apple and a 1,000x cash prize! To do this, you’ll take guesses with the vultures. Pick correctly and the vultures will let Mowgli swing on to the next branch along the trail; pick wrongly and your feature ends there. Each vine that Mowgli swings on is also covered in cash multipliers that can seriously pad your bank balance.
As if all of this wasn’t enough, there’s also a Bonus Gamble. After any feature game, you can choose to gamble your winnings on another feature game. It’s a good way to sample all the other bonus games and amp up your thrill factor. Even if you lose the gamble, the game compensates your risk-taking bravado with a Balooby cash prize.
How Does The Game Perform?
The game plays up the jungle/safari elements with really vibrant illustrations. Every character is drawn in a new cartooney illustration style that is slightly familiar, but also really fresh at the same time. For example, you can see Mowgli’s headstrong character as he swings confidently from vine to vine to pick up cash bonuses in his feature. Whenever there’s a big win, the entire screen dances along and explodes in celebration!
The Feature That You Should Look Out For
Jungle Jackpots is produced by a UK-based studio called Blueprint Gaming. This studio is a master at developing slots based on popular third-party brands. Have you seen the slot versions of Plants vs Zombie’s, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Bejeweled and Top Cat? Those games are all created by Blueprint Gaming. All of these are no shoddy reproductions either, but a full-blown one with teams of designers tasked with drawing and animating each story.
And Finally…
This game is filled to the brim with features. There are three different types of wilds symbols, four different feature games, feature gamble, extra spins, thirty paylines… there’s never a dull moment in Jungle Jackpots! Of course, all of features does not automatically translate to great payouts and you’ll still need a good dose of luck in order to win big. However, if you’re a fan of the original story, you won’t want to miss out on Jungle Jackpots.
