Untamed Giant Panda slot from Microgaming offers sizeable jackpot prizes

Esteemed biologist and naturalist Chris Packham once famously wrote that he'd let the Giant Panda's slowly fall into extinction, simply because they seem to attract so much attention compared to many other creatures that are equally threatened but go without hardly any attention or support.

However, Panda's are very fluffy, cute and somewhat clumsy and that does make them very endearing so I don't subscribe to Packham's view and I'd like to try and keep them going if we can. And I'd certainly be interested in playing a slot based on them, which is precisely what Microgaming's Untamed Giant Panda slot is.

This is the third in a series of Untamed wildlife slots, the other two featuring an Eagle and a Wolf, but this is a more gentle game, with a much lower variance than those other two slots, which tends to mean lots of wins, but they tend to be smaller value.

With 243 Ways to Win across the 5x3 reels, is this bamboo chewing creature one you should pay particular attention to in slot form? We decided to take a look and find out.

Overview

• Game: Untamed Giant Panda
• Developer: Microgaming
• Reels: 5x3
• Pay Lines: 243 ways to win
• Minimum Bet: 0.30
• Maximum Bet: 4.50
• Jackpot: 90,000
• Free Spins Bonus: Yes
• Other Bonuses: Yes
• Progressive: No
• Volatility: Low

Presentation

The presentation of the slot is very nicely done with a number of nice touches. The setting is the bamboo forests of East Asia, where the Panda roams free. The reels are superimposed over this and in the background some suitably atmospheric Asian-sounding music plays, although it is not as generic as some other slots with an eastern theme and it does have a more 'westernised' feel than some other games. The effect though is excellent as it gives a peaceful ambiance when playing on the game.

The controls for the reels are all at the foot of them and you can control the size of the bet, as well as use the Auto Play option to spin the reels if you prefer.

What is on the reels?

There are just nine standard symbols on the reels in the Untamed Giant Panda slot game and these include the five lower value symbols, the playing card lows from the 10 through to the Ace. You won't win very much at all for three of the symbols on the reels, with pays of less than a tenth of your total bet, but the pays for four or more symbols on the 243 Ways to Win reels offer at least the same as your bet, if not more.

There are four higher value symbols on the reels, the lowest being a landscape picture, then a view of a panda in the forest, a panda with its cub and lastly a close up of a giant panda's face. These offer slightly better value wins than the lower value symbols and again wins start at three on a pay line. The maximum win you can land is 6.66x your total bet (which for a 3.00 bet for example, is 20.00).

Wild features

The Untamed Giant Panda symbol is the in game Wild and this appears on all five reels. It is also the highest paying of all symbols in terms of a single pay line win offering you 1.66x your win up to 16.6x your stake. It can also substitute for all other symbols in the game, apart from the Scatter symbol to help create additional wins.

However, one of the nice bonus features of the Wild symbol is that beneath each of the reels is a little counter box with four empty spaces. As you land a Wild on a particular reel, it will fill in one of the empty spaces below the reel. Fill all four in by landing Wilds on the reels enough times and you will turn that entire reel completely Wild for the next four spins.

Free Spins features

To trigger the Free Spins bonus you need to land three or more the panda eye Scatter symbols anywhere on the reels. These are called the Peeking symbols (as it looks like an eye looking through some kind of hole) and regardless of whether you land 3, 4 or 5 you will trigger 10 Free Spins, however the initial pay out you get as part of the offer does increase from a minimum of 5x your bet up to a maximum of 250x your total bet.

During Free Spins, every one of the Brilliant Wilds landed on the reel will be Sticky Wilds and will stick to the screen during the bonus, remaining there for successive spins. The more of these Wilds you can land on the screen, especially at the same time, then the more chance you have of landing a more sizeable cash prize.

One additional nice feature of the Untamed Giant Panda slot is that if you just miss out on triggering the bonus by landing the third of the Scatters just off one of the reels, the Lucky Nudge bonus can trigger, which will nudge the Scatter just off the screen back into full view on the reels and this will then trigger the Free Spins bonus outlined above.

With every win in the base game or Free Spins you can choose to gamble your winnings using the Your Gamble feature, which allows you to select your chances of winning. The smaller the chance, the greater the odds you will be paid out at. You can elect to use this aspect of the slot as you want, on any win and at any odds, but remember if you lose, you lose all the money you have gambled which can be between 50% and 100% of your initial winnings.

Best feature of the Untamed Giant Panda slot

Although the Free Spins bonus round with Sticky Wilds is the part of the slot that most people will target when they play the game, for me the most exciting aspect of the slot is the Collect A Wild bonus. This really livens up the base game a huge amount and when you turn one of the reels Wild, especially one of the first three reels, then you can rack up some of the better value wins in the base game. The good news is that this bonus does trigger relatively frequently on the reels in play, which makes you feel like you are at least getting a little added value for your spins.

Conclusion

The Untamed Giant Panda slot is one of the more player-friendly in the Untamed series of games from Microgaming. The other two games are more volatile to me and this game with its low variance and regular wins makes for a more sustainable game in the longer term. The down side of that is that you don't tend to win the larger amounts very often, and that is the case on this game. But if you prefer lower variance slots with some nice features that have been nicely realised then Untamed Giant Panda is one game you should take a closer look at.

You can play the Untamed Giant Panda slot at any of the Mega Moolah casinos.