Tornado Farm Escape Slot
Tornado Farm Escape was the first new slot released by NetEnt in 2015. It's a 5-reel slot with a fixed 20 pay lines and some uniquely enjoyable features. The game starts with one of NetEnt's custom intros, explaining how the poor, downtrodden animals on the farm work so hard, and usually just for chicken-feed (especially the chickens). Then, one day, a massive tornado sweeps through the farmland and carries the oddly-happy farmyard critters off to pastures new, away from their hellish working conditions. While you are playing the game, you're required to watch out for tornados and whirlwinds, although they are generally good news as they whip the symbols away from the reels and dump them back down to create more profitable situations for you.
The farmyard stars on the reels are a cow, a horse, a sheep, a pig and a chicken. There are other bits of detritus as well, including stools, radios and wellington boots. You gain prizes in two ways – firstly the usual way in landing at least three identical symbols in sequence from the left hand reel onwards on a pay line, and secondly during the tornado feature, where you collect symbols that are blown off the reels by the ferocious winds. The more you collect, the more you win!
Payout & bonus rounds
Payouts start at 5x your bet-per-line (all 20 lines are fixed and are in play at all times) for three stools, boots or radios, up to 700x if you have a cow, or in fact five of them.
On reel 1 there's a hot symbol, and on reel 5 there's a cold symbol. If you land both of these on screen at the same time, you trigger the tornado! The central symbol on reel 3 becomes the 'active' symbol, and any of these symbols (and the 'wild' symbol) will be collected for each spin as long as the tornado rages. The more symbols you collect, the bigger your prize will be. If you manage to collect at least eight wild symbols, you win 4,500x your bet-per-line.
The 'Storm' feature is triggered randomly, and begins on either reel 1 or reel 5. For each spin the storm moves across the reels one reel at a time, changing normal symbols into wild symbols and triggering more wins.
The wild symbol (when it's not being collected) also substitutes for all other symbols, aside from the hot and cold symbols.
Tornado Farm Escape may be a simple game, but it's another turbo-powered winner from NetEnt. It's not the first slot to have the 'collect symbols and win' feature, but that shouldn't detract from what is a very decent effort. Playing the game is a breeze, and if you strike lucky, you'll find yourself suddenly deluged in a whirlwind of lovely cash!