Tiger Stacks Slot by Playtech

Everything here comes down to filling reels with tigers. The three big cats stack tall, and when tiger symbols cover both full positions of reels 1 and 2, the Tiger Bonus wakes up and checks how far right the stack runs. Fill reel 3 as well and you take the Minor at 500 times the coin. Reels 3 and 4 pay the Major at 2,000. Cover reels 3, 4 and 5 and the Grand hands over 50,000 times the coin, worth roughly 1,667 times your total stake and the biggest thing this game does. One prize per spin, and wilds don't count as tigers for any of it, so a lucky substitute won't sneak you into a jackpot.

Three scatters landing on adjacent reels from the left open the free games, and this is where you actually get to choose. A pick screen offers three routes that trade spins for firepower. Take 5 and every tiger type, black, orange and white, turns wild when it lands. Take 10 and only the orange and white cats transform. Take 20 and just the white tiger goes wild. So the short round floods the reels while the long one leaves you mostly waiting on one symbol. Five loaded spins against twenty thin ones is a real gamble, and which way you lean says more about your nerve than the odds. Transforms hit reels 2 through 5, the round can retrigger, and the ordinary wild subs for everything but the scatter across those same four reels.

The setting is a Chinese mountain gorge at dusk. Jagged cliffs, tiered pagodas glowing with red lanterns, a turquoise waterfall down one side and two real tigers prowling the rocks past the reels. The symbols are bold: a purple-black tiger, a Bengal orange and a white one rendered as tall portraits, a red silk lantern with a gold bell, stacked gold ingots, a red-rimmed yin-yang disc and faceted jade gems, sitting over jade-outlined card royals. Three jackpot banners burn across the top the entire time, a running tally of exactly what all that stacking is meant to reach.