The Rift Slot

Oh wow, Thunderkick really s******d us over with this one! Who ever came up with the idea of having sticky wilds that disappear the moment they become part of a winning combination? Can you imagine if Dead or Alive did this, those huge thousands of stake hits that the game has become renowned for would never have existed. This has to be the only game where you can end up with six "sticky wilds" on the screen during ten free spins and still only end up with 8x your bet at the end of the so called bonus stage!

Yes, "The Rift" is one holy mess of a slot game with rules which just should never be allowed to exist in the world of on-line gambling! The rift logo acts as the trigger for the "Rift Spins" bonus round, where three so-called Sticky Wilds will be added to the reels, but if your anything like me you'll be completely confused when those supposedly sticky wilds start disappearing! Even if you get the maximum 20 free spins for all five of these scatter symbols, you'll still struggle to achieve a decent sized win.

It's not like the paytable has been bulked up to accommodate for this rip off bonus mechanic either as the top symbol still only pays out a pathetic 30x your stake for a five of a kind. Despite all this the game promises a reasonably high overall RTP percentage of 96.3% so I can only presume this is a NetEnt style bankroll drainer designed to suck you dry slowly but certainly ... okay I know that is basically what all slots are designed to do but please, the way this thing is set up is completely horrible and Thunderkick would do well to withdraw this game now because I am NOT LAUGHING here, this is a HORRIBLE game!

The Rift is a new slot produced by Thunderkick. The theme looks very scary, like where black magic is practiced but a nice bright purple colour in that darkness brings some flavour to the background

The base game has low potential and is almost as boring as it can get. With low paylines and winnings in base game is not often either, can eat your balance quickly. The base game's excitement is all about triggering the re-spin feature and hoping to get at least 3 sticky wilds.

This slot features both a re-spin and a free spin feature, and both of them have sticky wild symbols integrated in the game play. The re-spin feature is triggered when 2 scatter symbols appear anywhere on the reels and the rift wheel chooses how many sticky wilds appear for the re-spin. Well from my experience I only had 1 big win using the re-spin feature. Sometimes the wild symbols lands on reels 1,2 and 3, but then you get the lowest paying symbols landing on the reels, which means you do not even make a profit of that re-spin.

The free spins feature is triggered when 3 or more scattered symbols lands on the reels. The potential in the free spins is however a bit better, but no major potential. You are awarded with 10 free spins for 3 scatters, 15 spins for 4 and 20 spins for 5 scatters. The rift wheel comes into play and you need to land 3 scatter symbols on the reels in order to unlock 1 sticky wild with each spin and 2 additional free spins. You can get up to a maximum of 3 sticky wilds. With that said you can also land additional wilds besides the sticky wilds on the reels and if you do not win, all the wilds stuck on the reels until you generate a win. This is the only time you can see yourself for a big win.

The game has an RTP of 96% but for me it look like it's in the low 90's. This game always takes my money and I am never lucky here. Would rate it 5/10.

The Rift is video slot with 5 reels and 17 pay lines. It is creation of Thunderkick software provider. I really like some of Thunderkick games, for example: fruit warp, barber shop and birds on a wire. I tried The Rift slot a while ago, I think it was about a month ago or something like that.

You can play it with min bet which is set to just 0.10€ per spin. But while I was playing it my bet was 0.5€ per spin. When you get 2 bonus symbols on the reels you get rift spin. But when you get 3 or more bonus symbols you win bonus game which is free spins. For three bonus symbols you get 10 free spins and during those free spins there are sticky wilds. Man I really like sticky wilds, but not into this game since the payouts were low.

Each bonus symbol that appear on the reels during free spins activates 1 step on the Rift seal until the seal is completely filled. Every third step on seal will grant +2 free spins and add 1 more sticky wild to every remaining spin of the bonus game.

When I triggered bonus game, I had ˝some luck˝. Well I got big win screen, but my win was only x15 my bet. Funny thing, I do not like those animations of big win when I win only x15 my bet. I think this game is not so good, mostly because of the payouts. I expected bigger winnings here, during bonus game where are sticky wilds. I expected massive win when 4 wilds are on the reels. But yeah, not here. Only on Dead or alive is possible to get massive win with sticky wilds.
Otherwise the main game is also ˝bad˝, I had a few wins around x10 bet, never more than that. I don’t think I will play it again, because of the payouts.

The Rift, one of the latest game to be released by Thunderkick but still not freely available at most casinos. Why is that? God knows why! Maybe there was an unexpected rift between Thunderkick and most of the casinos? Maybe there's a rift in the game that Thunderkick only found out later and so decided not to make it available to the public as yet? Gees, there could be thousands of rift reasons on the whys, but lets not worry about that. It doesn't concern me at all, for all I know and care. All I wanna do, is get some fun. Now which band said that? Dang, I've forgotten, but lets get some fun on anyway! Hehehe.

Thunderkick has got back to using 16-bit graphics for their new games, which I think is a good thing, but the quality of presentation is still sadly lacking, as can be seen in this new game. The overall look isn't as exciting nor attracting as it should be. Personally, I found those coin icons too small to be discernible, rather difficult at first to figure out what those icons are actually representing, and the other symbols too really need to be slightly more bigger to be more eye-catching and more attractive. Okay, Thunderkick is still a 'new' games provider, but I hope they will learn fast and keep up with the competition. I hate to see them falling behind, because I do appreciate some of their better games, like Fruit Warp, Birds on a Wire and even Esqueleto Explosivo.

This Rift game was rather boring at first, with the reels spinning and spinning with nothing much happening. I could see my credits draining slowly and I was getting a little bit concerned about that. Only when the first Rift free spin came on, things started to pick up. What is this 'Rift free spin' you're asking? When you get 2 of that 'Rift' icons anywhere on the reels, one Rift free spin is awarded. In this 1 free spin game, 1 to 3 Wilds would be randomly thrown onto the reels, as determined by that Rift indicator, creating whatever wins that come with that one spin. Get 3 or more of this Rift icons and a free spins game is awarded, from 10 to 20 free spins. Sadly though, there isn't any win multiplier for the free spins game and the Wilds don't pay or double any wins either. Retriggering of more free spins is also not possible, but additional free spins and extra Wilds can be won with each additional Rift icon appearing on the reels.

That may not sound interesting at all, but the actual free spins game can be quite interesting and fruitful, as I soon found out. On my 2nd free spins game, those extra sticky Wilds and extra free spins did some nice work by giving me 2 'Big Win's with 5-of-a-kinds, finally paying out a reasonable 120x total bet win. This win could have be much higher but the blardy low paytable made sure that nothing really big could happen! Damn! The way I see it now, the only way to win big in this Rift game is to get as many of the extra sticky Wilds and extra free spins and hope to hit as many 5-of-a-kinds as possible. No single win has the potential of paying out huge, sad to say! 5 Wilds, for example, only pays 30x total bet. So how on earth to win big?!

My biggest dislike on the game is the lack of big win potentials! Every symbol pays very lowly, there isn't any win multiplier or doubling of any wins, no Expanding Wilds either, but thank god for those sticky Wilds! Nonetheless, unlike the sticky Wilds in Dead or Alive, the sticky Wilds in this game do not stay on for every spin! Each win with a Wild symbol makes that Wild symbol disappear, so the next spin plays with whatever sticky Wilds are remaining on the reels! Now this is something I don't like, because repeated big wins just cannot be achieved! The Rift may be fun to play for entertainment value, and on extended play time, but it certainly lacks the punch for any big wins.