Featuring a daring escape from a Chinese kitchen where they’re made to work for the evil Emperor Penguin, the penguins that are in the main roles of Penguin City are fun and cute to look at, a deadly combination for a slot machine. It’s one of the Yggdrasil Gaming releases, so you know that it’s going to be fun to play right from the start.
Not only are you getting 243 ways to win for the slot’s 5×3 reels, but they’re also going to pay both ways, which is quite rare to see for such a game. Moving on to features, the list includes the wilds that will turn sticky and a Penguin Escape Mode with Stacked Emperor Wilds. Each win you form inside can bring you up to $1,250.
Betting
You place bets in Penguin City while you’re pretending that you’re using 25 lines, but that’s just to make wagering easier. The minimum line bet is $0.01, the maximum one gets to $5, and so the betting range for the entire game area will be $0.25 to $125.
Penguin City Jackpot
The individual payouts of a slot with ways to win will not go very high, offering $1,250 at most in this case. You do get a chance to form a lot of wins in a single round, and apparently the game can offer rewards of more than 1,500x the bet.
The ways to win, combined with the features of the slot, contribute to an RTP that long-term is expected to settle around 96.21%.
Special Features
A major feature in Penguin City will be the way the combinations are formed. I’m not talking about the ways to win system, since that’s a fairly common option in slot machines these days. It’s the Win Both Ways feature that impressed me in this case, since I almost never see it in games like these. What this means is that having matching symbols on consecutive reels will get you wins when they start either from the left or the right, while most slots use only the former option.
Wild Symbols
At its core, the wild symbol doesn’t feel that unusual or unique, since it ends up being used only as a substitute. It’s even reserved for use only on the 2nd and 4th reels, so the other three are not getting any help from it. Still, it’s more useful here than you might imagine, since it appears in wins if it’s on the right reel, it doesn’t have to be in a certain position. The ways to win system is quite useful that way.
If you manage to get one of these wild symbols in a win, then it will become sticky and you will get it in the same position for one more round. At the same time, a wild win gets you access to a Penguin Escape Mode.
Penguin Escape Mode
As I mentioned above, you enter this mode by having a wild win form in the base game. A penguin will try to escape at this point. He might fail, in which case you don’t get anything. He could also award a wild though, or could do a symbol swap. The wild is added for the winning spins, the swap is done for losing spins, so that you can still get a win. Once you hit a round with no wins, the Penguin Escape Mode ends.
Stacked Emperor Wild: this is a stacked wild that you can get on reel 3, only for the duration of the Penguin Escape Mode. It guarantees a win and each round it will move down by one position. While the Emperor is present, the penguins will not attempt to escape.
Design
The kitchen of a Chinese restaurant is the battlefield on which you’re going to be spinning reels. You have a crew of penguins that are forced to work by the Emperor Penguin, and they’re not happy about it.
They’re going to try and escape at the first opportunity they get, and there are cool animations that will kick in once you get a wild win. The penguins are present in the background, in the kitchen, and they’re constantly moving around.
The reels are only going to host images of the various Chinese dishes, of card suits, and sometimes of the Emperor Penguin as well. The rest of the crew is not present in the game area though.
Summary
Yggdrasil Gaming continues to release gorgeous slot machines, animated and with high overall production values. They also innovate in this particular case, with unique features being implemented to help the slot reach its 96.21% RTP.
