>The London Underground, otherwise known as The Tube, is the world's first underground railway, which opened to the public in 1863. Since then, it has expanded to 272 stations, 400 km of track, and makes hundreds of millions of passenger journeys each year. If you're interested in trivia and history like that, you might also be interested in Down the Rails from software provider Pragmatic Play. It's a whistle-stop tour through several well-known Tube stations while featuring a number of famous historical figures along the way.
The action takes place underground at a station that appears to start with the letter 'W'. Westminster, Waterloo? Players choice, unless we're missing some other screamingly obvious clue. Actually, facepalm moment because, in another different pic, the W is actually printed on a 'Way Out' sign. Anyway, it appears we've gone back in time since the patrons' clothing and the older-looking trains evoke something like the 1950s. Maybe a bit earlier, or later, but some time in the past either way. Certainly not as historic as some of the symbols on the board, which we'll get to shortly. Down the Rails's look is certainly unique. London in pop culture is usually an explosion of Queen's Guards, Big Ben, and punk, a la Punk Rocker. It was a pleasant surprise to see Pragmatic Play take a different high-brow approach for their London-based game.
Mind the gap, people, as play occurs on a 5-reel, 3-reel game board, crossed with 20 fixed paylines like a mini-Tube map. Along these lines, punters collect a win when three to five matching symbols land from the left-hand side on adjacent reels. Down the Rails conducts itself in a highly volatile manner, while RTP maxes out at 96.51% but can be found at two lower levels. Stakes can be set from 20 p/c to $/€125 per spin, and any device may be used to trip beneath the ground.
Apologies to our British friends if we get these names wrong, but the high pays in Down the Rails appear to be luminaries such as Isaac Newton, Florence Nightingale, William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, and Henry VIII. The low pays aren't as impressive, consisting of J-A card royals. Should five matching symbols hit, they generate a payout of 2.5 to 5 times the stake for the lows and 10-25x the bet for the highs. Wild symbols appear on all reels, possessing the same value as the highest pay symbol when making wins of itself. Otherwise, wilds can be used to substitute anything except bonus or feature-related symbols.
>If you're familiar with Blueprint Gaming slots like The Goonies, Down the Rails will feel familiar. Its base game has five modifier extras that activate at random, as well as five different bonus rounds to trigger or gamble for.
On any base game spin, one of these five modifiers can randomly be activated:
Hitting 3 or more scatter symbols triggers the Bonus feature or the End of the Line round. Next, one of the five bonus rounds is awarded whilst players are also able to gamble what they have been given or accept it. Successful gambles award the next higher tier bonus, while unsuccessful gambles result in a payout of 4-24x the bet before going back to the base game. Gambling ends when it is lost, the bonus is accepted, or the End of the Line is won. The five non-retriggerable bonuses are:
5 free spins are awarded. Winning combinations are marked into a cluster and the rest of the symbols respin. Repsins end when no more symbols can be added to the cluster and winning combinations are paid.
Kings Cross also comes with 5 free spins. During Kings Cross, spots on the middle reels are marked with a cross. When a wild symbol lands in a marked spot, all symbols in the other marked spots are transformed into wilds.
Buckingham Palace provides 8 free spins. In this round, a fully stacked wild symbol is added to the reel strips. If it lands outside of the screen, it is moved, so it covers all positions on its reel. In addition, all character symbols are transformed into the highest value one.
Players get 8 free spins with a new collect symbol. On random spins, character symbols can show values of 1x to 50x the bet. If the collect symbol is in view at the same time, the values are awarded.
End of the Line is a hold and win style game, starting with 3 respins on an empty grid. When character money symbols land, they reset the spin count back to 3. Money symbols lock into place with values of 1x to 2,500x the bet, and when special symbols hit, they are collected. These are :
The round ends when respins run out, if the win cap is hit, or the grid is covered in money symbols.
>Like barging through the London Underground during rush hour, that was a lot to cover. As Samuel Johnson said, '… when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.' It should take a while for keen proponents of these Blueprint Gaming style feature fests to get tired of Down the Rails, too, due to the sheer number of bonus rounds to sample.
Most of the bonuses, bar End of the Line, are quite simplistic, so seeing them once might be enough to cross them off the list. Working through all of them might take time, but the gamble option is there if you get a bonus you don't like the look of and are feeling lucky. Receiving a consolation payout does cushion the blow of being sent back to the base game to an extent if the gamble doesn't pay off. It's funny how familiar everything feels, and if Pragmatic Play hadn't been so daring with the theme choice, the connection to Blueprint Gaming might have been stronger. As it stands, the unusual setting and cast of characters help prevent Down the Rails from gaining all-out copy-cat status. However, it is a little ironic to see trail-blazing creative types like William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton in a game that at times feels like someone else's work. Or maybe not, since it's said Shakespeare received varying degrees of inspiration from a wide range of sources.
As The Bard said, 'There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune'. Catching the right tide in Down the Rails can lead to wins of up to 5,000x the bet. A fitting win cap to one of the more peculiar slots Pragmatic Play has released of late, from a thematic standpoint, and a set of slightly peculiar features to go with it.
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