Pragmatic Play is going all in on the animal theme with three of its latest creations being either horse-related (Mustang Gold, Treasure Horse) or, as is the case here, inspired by African wildlife. It's not a theme we're personally huge fans of but if the playability is solid, the maths on point and there's good money to be won, who cares? As a matter of fact, all of the things mentioned are factors that have helped propel Pragmatic from a sort of boundless vacuum to a more central position on the market, with players now becoming increasingly aware of its games.
Despite this, Pragmatic has not managed to win us over. There's still a sort of generic feel to the games (in our opinion) that the company seem to be unable to shake and the bonuses are for the most part unreasonably hard to trigger. What we think, however, doesn't always matter of course and players tend to have a broad perspective in general - you'd be shocked to learn about some of the games many players keep hammering away at on a daily basis.
Safari King is the name of this Pragmatic Play video slot that is set in the African savannah and played on a 5-reel, 4-row reel set with 50 paylines. It's not exactly rich in base game features (there are none) and, although there appears to be a chance of landing a full-screen top symbol in the base game (hard to tell since we haven't seen the reel strips), it's the bonus that packs most of the punch.
Safari King comes shipped with a default RTP setting of 96.49% as well as an alternative 96.37% RTP if that is preferred by the operator. No need to delve into that as both are well within the acceptable range. Available on nearly every type of device it's accessible to most players, although many low-rollers might shy away from it due to the minimum 0.50€ stake. High stake players, on the other hand, will love it as it allows for bets as high as 250€ per spin.
Visually, it's a decent looking game but that generic feel that we mentioned earlier is still there. To be fair, there are more developers than Pragmatic suffering from this symptom and since the games are of fairly high quality it's not actually a deal-breaker. What really saves Safari King visually, however, is the elegantly animated backdrop where you'll see dried grass swaying in the breeze and birds flying across the screen.
There are 13 symbols in total here and unsurprisingly, the low-value symbols are represented by A, K, Q, J, 10 and 9 royals. Moving up to the more valuable symbols we see gazelles, cheetahs, rhinos and elephants on the reels - the latter being the most lucrative one giving you 20 times your stake for 5 of a kind as well as being the only symbol appearing fully stacked on the reels.
King of the feline family and top predator of the savannah, it's the lion that is the centre of attention here. It represents the wild symbol and can appear on all reels bar the first.
>To gain access to the free spins mode, you will have to land 3 bonus symbols on the middle reels. Starting with 8 free spins, players will benefit from extra wild symbols as 1 wild symbol is added to reels 2, 3, 4 and 5 before every spin. The added wilds remain on the reel set (not sticky, however) throughout the session. Now, every bonus symbol that appears on the reels during the bonus adds one more free spin to your total with no limit to how many times you can retrigger the feature.
As you've likely already figured out, the combination of retriggers and added wilds makes for quite an exciting bonus as the potential for landing the 1000x max win (full-screen elephants/lions) increases with every spin played.
Safari King makes no attempt to come across as anything other than the simple, rather ordinary, slot that it is. It's not bad mind you and the 1000x per spin win potential undoubtedly makes it worth a shot. With that said, there's that generic feel to it, made worse by its uninspiring savannah theme that we've seen too many times before.
This is not Pragmatic's proudest moment, and maybe it was never meant to be. If you're willing to look beyond the lack of features and originality, it might offer some entertainment to you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for something more explosive from Pragmatic we recommend that you try Da Vinci's Treasure or Peking Luck.
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