African Quest

When I first came across African Quest whilst browsing through Microgaming games, the first impression that I got was that it looks similar to Safari Heat (Playtech), so I was expecting it to play on similar grounds too, but I was wrong. This African Quest game is actually by Triple Edge Studios, playing with 1024 ways to win, but with a starting bet of only 0.10 per spin, similar to PlaynGo and Thunderkick games. I like this because I won’t need a big starting balance to try the game out, and so I did.

Only upon opening the game did I realise that it plays with 5 reels and 4 rows, and that the Tree icon is the Wild symbol (Scatter symbol in Safari Heat), but apart from this, nothing else in the paytable is the same, or even similar, to Safari Heat. The win values of all the symbols are even worse – the Wilds are non-paying, 5 Scatters pay only 20x the total bet, and the top regular symbol, the Lion, pays only 7.5x. Argh!

But that’s not all of it yet! The free spins feature offers 3 choices – 5 free spins with a 3x or 4x multiplier, 8 free spins with a 2x or 3x multiplier, and lastly, 12 free spins with a 1x or 2x multiplier. One more “argh!” from me! The only good thing is that the multipliers multiply when 2 or 3 of them appear in a winning combination, boosting wins up to a maximum of 64x, but in all honesty, getting 3 of the 4x multipliers in a single winning combination would be almost impossible! The 4 free spins games that I managed to get couldn’t even pay above 12x my staked amount – most of them were dead spins, or wins that paid damn poorly, and with hardly any Wild symbols appearing either!

Can the free spins be retriggered? Probably yes, but don’t count on it! Getting 2 Scatters during a free spin would add 3, 5 or 6 more free spins, depending on which mode it is playing, but I have never got any 3 Scatters so far.

African Quest is a high volatility game, and good big wins are only possible if you can get 3 Wilds in any winning combination, on as many paylines as possible, otherwise the payouts would be poor! I don’t think I would want to play African Quest again - my first play session went so badly that I don’t have any confidence on the game!