Winterberries Slot

Apparently Yggdrasil was setup by a bunch of people who were formerly working for the "top tier" slot providers, I imagine most likely NetEnt and Microgaming, but they became disillusioned with the direction those companies were taking and set about recruiting other top minds from the industry to setup the worlds best developer of on-line slots. It's a fascinating story and one that's probably been embellished a little along the way, but regardless it does go a long way to explaining the fantastic quality of these games despite them being one of the newest kids on the block.

Every Yggdrasil game I have seen has fantastically high resolution detailed graphics and this one is no exception - the fruit based symbols just pop off the screen in their rich colours and I just had to take a look on my retina display tablet to see the game at its best. The user interface, introduction and paytable screens are definitely reminscent of a NetEnt game.

Spinning the reels for the first time it's clear this game should have some huge chances for big wins - all the symbols are stacked on the reels making wins on all 25 paylines a salivating possibility. The paytable looks a little disappointing until you bear that fact in mind with just 20x bet for the top paying symbol, but this game has another trick up its sleeve yet!

Hitting winning combinations triggers free respins with the chance to add further symbols to your win, a lot like the NetEnt JackHammer games, but unlike those games any symbols on the 4th or 5th reel that aren't adjacent to your existing combination on a payline will remain in place allowing you a chance to "fill in the gaps" and complete your five of a kind. When it happens it feels really satisfying!

There's no scatter symbols on the reels, nor a bonus or free spins however there is one last thing - that paytable... it wasn't technically correct! In actual fact each of the five reels is labelled across the top with a multiplier up to 5x, and the number of reels that form part of your winning payline(s) determines which one your win will be multiplied by. It does make the paytable a little confusing, granted, but all I know is I've hit some huge wins on this game!

Another great slot from these guys, Yggdrasil are definitely the name to watch. I just hope their games become more widespread as they are quite rare at the moment - only 32 casinos listed with them here at AskGamblers compared to hundreds for the big names. This can only improve whilst they are putting out games like this though.

"Winter Berries" is virtually identical to another slot of Yggdrasil named "Fruitoids", and arguably the only thing that changes are the pictures, now instead of fruits of alien appearance symbols are represented with colorful berries. Anyway, as I enjoyed playing Fruitoids, just as I enjoyed playing this slot because again I've found a set of great-looking and beautiful design, wonderfully quick spins and a game system that for me it has proven to be quite beneficial, despite not having bonus either free spins rounds.

Special features of Winter Berries are directly linked to spins during the base game and all of them are integrated in some degree at certain time, thus causing a significant gain and even up to a Big Win. These special features are not triggered by any special symbol, such that during the game you will not see any scatter or bonus symbol, see either wild symbols sorted on the spinning reels. The sequence in activation of special features is as follows: whenever we get a hit for completing some fragment of line on any active payline, identical symbols involved in the best hit are frozen, they are equally frozen symbols with the same image that were not able to participate in such hit, then reels spin again until new equal symbols no longer appear. If during re-spins whole columns are filled, from left to right, with the same symbol, 1x per column is added to the total multiplier which will be multiplied by the total of your winning during that respective spin in this way: reels 1 and 2 full = 2x, ..., reels 1 to 5 full = 5x = BIG WIN.

Rules above are very simple but totally exciting, all the time your mind is concentrated begging for the appearance of a new identical symbol again to also be frozen, waiting to complete new columns that allow you to gain greater multiplier and perhaps finally reaching your Eureka! In this slot I've come to collect up to 2 Big Wins in a space less than 30 turns, obviously this does not happen all the time, but to conclude, I would say that the potential of this game is not reduced only to fun generation, but it could extend even to generation of profits if proper money management strategy is applied and, of course, if you invite the lovely Lady Luck to play with you.

Winterberries is another slot with some excellent inspirational music which really gets you in the mood for playing this game. It almost feels like some nostalgic video game with a Bolivian local music feel attached to it. Again software provider Yggdrasil Gaming got it spot on!

Just like the game Fruitoids, which basically has the same format except a different theme, this game really gives playing video slots a new dimension. I cannot stress how important it is for players to have some good background music on the game.

I often come across games that annoy the hell out of me with music I cannot stand, but Winterberries delivers in many ways. The symbols consist of several delicious and tasty winterberries. I like how the winterberries bounce each time the symbols appear on the slot. It shows that the developers of this game really thought about how to make this game as appealing as possible.

Just like Fruitoids the game offers 5-reels, 25-paylines and 3-rows. In addition, each reel also has a multiplier going way all the way up to 5x every time you fill up a reel with the same symbols.

This has to happen from left to right though. Otherwise the next multiplier will not be triggered for that spin. The minimum bet on Winterberries is 25 cents. I experienced Winterberries during a couple occasions on bets of 50 cent.

Each time the same symbols appear, those symbols freeze up and then the reels spin again to achieve an even bigger win (free re-spin). The goal is to fill up all reels with the same symbol. That’s when you can take advantage of the biggest win and the 5x multiplier of course. I never made it that far though. Best win is 35 euros with several of the best paying symbols, but I always had a lot of playtime which is equally important to me to not feel “robbed” like some high-variance NetEnt or Microgaming games make you feel after a short session.

I really think Yggdrasil Gaming will be setting a new trend in the online gaming industry. These games seem simple but really have a lot to offer. I definitely recommend checking Yggdrasil games out.

The difficulty to trigger the multipliers is one point of irritation I must admit.

Probably it can be said about the products of this very promising new participant in the business that they a little bit on-schemed and all of them are working with the same used system and I also think there are some truth in this opinion but this is only related to the game segment because every slot that I’ve played with from Yggdrasil has really fantastic visualization and every one of them has real characteristic signs by own.

Winterberries slot is no exception and has a really natural and beauty pictorial environment. We can see a lake, snowy mountain tops and little forest under a starry black sky in the background (they blurred this image but I think it would have been wiser to let this image in its normal shooting form to be able to unfold its full visual effect and I believe it would give much more plus to the overall picture but it’s conceivable that doing this it would be bothering in visually so I really can’t judge it not seeing the other option, so I think it’s more of just a divination from my part ) and the symbols we can play with are all kinds of berries like sloe, rowan and rosehip are among the others and they have so wonderfully drawn illustrations that no one can find and mistake in them. This great graphics effect are just continue to increase when a win is completed and these berries got frozen and ice cubes can be visible on the screen. I’m very satisfied with the way Yggdrasil think of how a modern slot should look like and more importantly I really appreciate how they realized it in reality. It’s really top-notch quality.

Even though I would rate this appearance 10 out of 10 but the game segment shows some sign of lack of qualities and we can find here some real shortcomings too. Started with them I guess it’s enough if I say the slot doesn’t offer traditional free spin or bonus side game but more importantly a Wild symbol also isn’t attached to this game and the payout qualities also leaves something to be desired (the best 5 of a kind win just awards 500 times of line bet) and I can imagine that many players immediately turn away from this product saying ‘Then why should I play this slot?’ and however much I see their point here, believe me this slot is really worth to play and it still has some things to offer.

Without that many features the game play is very simple and players don’t have to read the rules or paytable to understand how it works. The reason why I still think this is a very payable slot is the re-spin feature. Normally I’m not a huge fan of this kind of features but at Winterberries it really works and many times really cause relative big wins. To those who are not familiar with this re-spin feature, it means if a win is completed on the reels the member symbols of that line stay on their positions while all other icon re-spin once and if among the newcomer pictograms there is at least one identical symbol this re-spin happens again. The arriving symbol can be anywhere on the table so it doesn’t have to be closely joining to the previously triggered ones.

Usually I play this 25-payline slot with €1.25 and sometimes it can pay back more than €30 or €50 thanks to this re-spin function and the other great multiplied re-spin feature. This happens if we can get entire reels with the same symbols and sometimes the re-spin brings another consecutive column filled up with that icon and the final amount that we can win here is multiplied with the number of reels that covered with identical symbols. At first it seems almost impossible task but thanks to the good game settings the slot really does that from time to time.

Overall, even if there are some major drawbacks regarding to game features but what we got here have really good qualities and that’s why the slot can be more or less successful and truly rare times but even profitable. The great atmosphere the game creates, the beautiful environment and the exceptional visual effects are the ones that proved to be the strengths of this product and if in the future the developer could improve the quality of the payouts and widening the number of available features I honestly think this slot would have the ability to get called a perfect video slot game. But until then we have to live together with its shortcomings and that’s why this can’t be more than just a (very) good product.

“Winterberries” is a slot, well with ... berries. I know only one type of berries, namely the strawberries and none of the 7 types of berries of this slot is familiar to me. I tried to do a print screen, and do a google image search for one particular type of berry and the only indication I found was that these types of berries (symbols of the slot) are found only in the Nordic countries. This explains the winter landscape from the back of the slot.

The “Winterberries” slot is one of the last Yggdrasil games that can be found on AskGamblers pages where I have not played yet. The graphic appearance is as beautiful as all of the other slots and the various wild fruits (berries) are truly extraordinary. The slot has 25 paylines and resembles in some respects with “Fruitoids”: when you get a winning combination on the reels, it is “frozen” and there are given respins until there are no more symbols of the same kind. (All symbols of the same type are “locked” and at the end of the respins they provide a payout). For every reel filled in order from left to right a multiplier is advanced. But unlike “Fructoids” the Big Wins are very rare here. And yet ... about once every 5 spins you have a small win, about equal to the total bet, and if you play enough, about once every 100-200 spins you get also a Big Win, when all the fruits of the reels are of the same type.

In 400 spins I had about 5 such Big Wins, 2 of about 10 Euro, one of about 20 Euro, one of 31 Euro and one of over 93 Euro. I say that this was enough to have at the final (after 400 spins) about 44 Euro extra. However if you play here you have to play much, because there are series of 20-30 spins when you do not win anything. (Still for an average Big Win of 30 Euro and a 25 cents bet, this is acceptable).

Other features do not exist here except this freezing of the winning symbols, but the graphics is so inviting and the game is so alert (400 spins are played in less than 30 minutes) that everything seems to be almost perfect.

If you have 5-6 Big Wins and collect some extra cash you really think that slot is very good.

Here (unlike playing “Fructoids”) there are many more losing spins and 95% of wins are worth less than at “Fructoids”.