Among the games that will get a lot of attention during the summer of 2018, Robin of Sherwood is certainly one, and for good reason. The game, which was designed by Rabcat and then offered exclusively to Microgaming for release, is naturally inspired by the story of Robin Hood, the famous outlaw of Sherwood Forest.
As you travel to Sherwood Forest, you will find a setup with 5×3 reels to play on, while a total of 243 ways to win allow you to get rewards as high as $2,000 from each one. Some of the features that you will get are going to be regular ones, so wilds or free spins, but the game promises something unique as well, in the form of Wild Turning and Royal Clearing.
Betting
No need to worry about the betting system, even as there are 243 ways to win that have to be covered. Only 20 lines are actually used in your bets, and you have to pick the stake for each one. It ranges between $0.01 and $2, which means that $0.20 to $40 is the total amount that can be wagered.
Robin of Sherwood Jackpot
The typical slot machine with ways to win will pay less since there are more opportunities to form a combination. It’s what Rabcat is doing with Robin of Sherwood as well, a game that has a top prize of 1,000x, or up to $2,000 for each win. Naturally, the rewards can go up significantly when you have multiple matching symbols on some of the reels.
Example: a win on 5 reels, with two of the reels hosting 3 and 2 matching symbols, while the others get 1 symbol each, will result in 6 combinations of 5 symbols each (1x3x2x1x1)
Special Features
Robin of Sherwood has a relatively short list of features, and some will come in at random. More often than not, the wild is the one that will be helping out in the base game.
Wild Symbols
Standard wild symbols, featuring an image of three arrowheads and a logo at the bottom, will be present on all the reels of Robin of Sherwood. I liked that they’re often showing up double stacked, meaning that sometimes you get two wins at a time out of it. They only pay directly if they form a 5-symbol combo, otherwise they’re used only as a replacement for a regular symbol.
Wild Turning Feature
One very good way of getting more wilds on the reels is to have the Wild Turning random feature trigger. It’s not something that happens often though. This involves the transformation of the Royal symbols on 1+ reels, into extra wilds. The Royals are the Jack, Queen, King and Ace symbols. Wild Turning can only trigger during the paid spins.
Free Spins With Royal Clearing Features
An Archery Target, the one with the concentric circles, will act as a scatter and by appearing 3+ times it will give you 10 free spins. The position of the symbols isn’t important, only their total number, hence the name “scatter”. A downside would be that you can’t retrigger the free spins.
Royal Clearing: this is a feature which is available during the free spins. Every 2nd free spin that you go through, the game will remove one of the Royal symbols, so the high-paying symbols have a better chance at forming a combo. Eventually, you get to the last 2 free spins with all Royals removed from the reels. It really is a shame that you can’t get more rounds like that.
Design
Rabcat has always been an excellent developer of online slot machines, and the graphics of their titles have always managed to compete with the likes of NetEnt in terms of quality. Featuring a popular story that involves Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, along with Lady Mary and the Sheriff of Nottingham, the game has a highly-detailed design. The lesser symbols, the Royals as they’re called, will place their logos on the side of flags, so even they look appropriate for the theme.
Summary
Robin of Sherwood will be available exclusively at Microgaming or Quickfire casinos, but it’s a Rabcat creation and it looks it. Graphics and feature wise it manages to surprise, and I for one had a lot of fun with it.
