Part of the so called Heart series from Ash Gaming, Heart of the Jungle appears to be a Tarzan inspired slot machine, one which uses a man and a woman that were raised in the wild for its major roles, giving wild animals many of the other important symbols. The sister slot of this one is called Heart of the Frontier, and it’s Wild West themed.
As soon as it loads I can see that it’s the sort of game that delivers a lot, and which tries not to be boring. 50 lines which are used on just 5×3 reels give you plenty of opportunities to get multiple wins at a time. While the regular winning combinations pay up to $2,000, Heart of the Jungle will also throw some features at you, to sweeten the pot, using for the purpose wild symbols, scatters or four different versions for the Jungle Trail free spins.
Betting
Given the fact that the slot features 50 fixed lines for its reels, the wager will start from an absolute minimum of $0.50, and then it will go up from there. The highest that it can go is $50, at which point on each line there is a wager of $1.
Heart of Jungle Jackpot
Heart of the Jungle might not be the sort of game that makes you rich through single winning combinations, and the best one offered in the base game gets to $2,000 only. However, the symbols come in stacked and can get you paid across all lines even, if your luck gives you a hand. On top of that, 5x multipliers are available during certain types of free spins, while Ultra Spins can boost wins by 25x.
Special Features
It’s the special features that help sell this game to me, since they’re the ones that make it exciting. For starters, there are stacked symbols inside, the only exception being the scatter. If you get stacks of symbols next to each other, they unite and form huge symbols through which the rewards can be impressive.
Wild Symbols
One of the standard features that are offered in Heart of the Jungle, this symbol is responsible for offering the top 2,000x payouts of the slot. You can get one such combo on each of the 50 lines of the game. If it can’t do that, you still get a chance for it to appear next to other regular symbols and maybe form a combo with them.
Jungle Trail Free Spins
This is the feature that’s most elaborate, and which has a better potential than the base game rounds. Triggered via scattered Tribal Masks which need to appear at the same time on reels 1, 3 and 5, this feature has you traveling on a Jungle Trail. At each trigger of the free spins, you travel to a different place on the map and you get other types of free spins. Once you get the free spins triggered a certain number of times, there is a Payment Boost activated for each variant.
The Deep Jungle: your first stop will be here, and you win 8 free spins which benefit from 5x multipliers and a final Ultra Spin where multipliers can be up to 25x. With the 20th trigger of the free spins, the Payment Boost gives you 9 free spins instead of 5 for this version.
Crystal Falls: once you’ve triggered the Jungle Trail five times, you get access to Crystal Falls. This gets you 10 free spins which have up to 5 stacks of wilds present on the reels each round. The Payment Boost for it is active from the 25th trigger of the free spins, giving you 12 spins instead of 10.
The Golden Mountain: for the third stop on the Jungle Trail, which is active after the 10th free spins trigger, there will be 15 free spins. Here, you get nudging wild symbols that are also sticky on the reels. The Payment Boost has 18 spins, rather than 15.
Lost City of Zantar: once you’ve triggered the free spins 15 times, you get this stage of the free spins, the last one. You receive 25 free spins of this type, where wilds can move and can increase the multiplier. The Payment Boost option, which you unlock later, gets you 5 additional free spins.
Design
Mostly, I’d say that it’s a typical jungle themed slot machine. The graphics are beautiful, with the tangled vines and trees of the jungle shown in the background, and flowers closer to the bottom area. On the reels, the symbols are split between the Royals and the themed symbols. The latter include Tribal Masks, images of the Jungle Man and the Jungle Woman, monkeys, elephants, leopards and parrots.
Summary
If you have the patience to wait for the free spins, I think that you will have a lot of fun with this game. It’s there that the biggest potential exists, and the more you play the better this feature gets.
