Pandamania Slot Review
It’s certainly all happening down the local zoo. The panda is on the loose cycling around the zoo on a pedal powered cart with a few balloons for good measure. He can do that because the zookeeper just happens to be a bit tied up at the moment. ‘Pandamania’ is a crazy slot game from NextGen who keep on releasing entertaining and profitable slot games.
There’s a colourful backdrop to the game which shows the zoo. To the left you can see a waterfall and on the right is a gorilla in a cage. He’s fast asleep and totally oblivious to the chaos being caused by the panda. There’s also a sign that says ‘Don’t Feed the Animals’ but that’s probably another rule that gets broken in this unruly zoo.
This is a five-reel game that has three rows of symbols and a total of 25 paylines. That’s not a fixed amount so it’s up to you to decide how many paylines to activate on each spin of the reels and your stake. That can vary from £0.01 to £50, just find a level you’re comfortable with. If you’re just chasing the bonus game then you don’t need to be activating all the paylines, just one will do.
The symbols in the game include a bag of sweets, a ticket for the zoo, the pedal-powered cart and that poor tied up zookeeper. Five of the zookeeper symbols pay you 500x your line bet. There’s also the nine to Ace playing card symbols, why we need so many is beyond me. Let’s have some more animals instead.
The wild symbol is the panda but without his vehicle. He can substitute for other symbols apart from the scatter and the bonus ones to get you some winning combinations. There’s some animation with the panda symbol as we see him eating some fish. Five wilds on an activated payline is the top win in the game paying a 3000x multiplier.
The scatter symbol is the PandaMania sign and the padlock is the bonus symbol. More about these in a moment.
There’s a lot happening here so have a good look through the paytable to see all the details. Also have some free games to see how the bonus games operate.
Bonus Games
To trigger the Pick Me Bonus you need to get three of the padlock symbols. These only appear on the second, third and fourth reels and if you can land them anywhere on the reels then that’s really going to be worth it. Remember they don’t have to be on an active payline so that means even if you only activate one payline there’s a chance of getting into the bonus round.
So what do you get? Well there’s three options available. You can either receive a cash prize, the chance of an extra pick or a 'Win All' option.
There’s also an Escaped Panda bonus which is awarded randomly during the base game. At the end of a spin the panda cycles across the screen (as they do of course) and add at least one wild to the reels. They are then re-evaluated and any more wins are paid out.
Three of the Pandamania scatter symbols will get you ten free spins. Again these can be anywhere on the reels. Any wins you get during the free spins round will be doubled and if those scatters turn up again in the required numbers then you can get more free spins. The Escaped Panda bonus happens more frequently during the free spins.
The game also has a gamble feature. This is the usual guess what the next card is going to be routine. Get the right colour to double a win and correctly guess the suit to quadruple a win. It’s not as easy as it looks though and you can easily lose some good wins.
Conclusion
There's lots happening in this game so it's definitely worth a play. The theme is a good one and on the whole the graphics look good too. The soundtrack is passable and a bit repetitive as most are. The bonus games can definitely get you some good wins so take a trip to the zoo and just hope the panda doesn't run you over.