Great White Elk Slot
Great White Elk is a 5-reel, fixed 10-pay line online slot from NextGen Gaming. This is a slot with a magical theme, as all the creatures that contribute towards the game seem to exist in a mythical land full of enchanted beasties. The visuals in this slot are something to behold, especially on the main playing screen where the shimmering spectacle of the northern lights can be observed.
The great white elk is the top beastie in this game, and his or her's appearance triggers the bonus features. There's also a green-haired elf and a spirit wearing a pink shawl. Competing the 'living and breathing' line up are an owl, a squirrel and a blue snake. For once, playing card values do not make an appearance – they are replaced by four coloured runes – green, blue, purple and red.
This slot has a slim number of pay lines – just ten. They are in play for every spin. Betting-wise, you can select your coin size from 0.01 to 2.00. As all ten pay lines are in play with each spin, your bet-per-spin is your coin size multiplied ten-fold. When you're ready to experience the magic, hit the spin button.
Payout & bonus rounds
The lowest possible payout in this game is for landing two of the spirit on a pay line, starting from and including the left-hand reel. This will win you two coins. The top pay out in normal play is for landing five of the green-haired elf. This will see two hundred and fifty coins tumble into your virtual pay-out tray.
Those runes have magical properties. Any of them may transform into an elf, spirit, eagle, squirrel or snake symbol at the start of any spin. ALL rune symbols of the same colour transform in this way for one spin.
The elk symbol is wild and substitutes for all other symbols except for the scattered tree symbol. The elk only appears on reel three, though. If you land an elk in a win it triggers between four and ten free games. The elk is held in position during your freebies. Every tree symbol that appears during free games awards the current 'enduring win' value. This value increases for each win that you land during free games that contains an elk. Once free spins are completed there's the additional 'Call of the Elk' feature. This awards a re=spin, and re-spins continue until no tree symbols appear.
The tree symbol is a scatter symbol and appears on all reels aside from the middle reel. If you land four scatters anywhere on the reels, you win five hundred coins.
All wins can be gambled. A card is presented to you face down, and you must decide whether you want to correctly guess its colour (to double your win) or its suit (to quadruple it). Guess right and you can guess again (up to five times) or collect, but guess wrong and you lose your win.
The Great White Elk looks spectacular, and comes with an authentic, mystical soundtrack. The gameplay is fine but just a little bit lacking. A bonus game would have been an ideal addition, because at the moment all you have are the spinning reels and the hope that one of the additional features may choose to make an appearance. In summary, this slot is simply not as magical as it could have been.