Winning Rocks!
Care for some rocks? Guess you never saw that coming, right?! Who in the world would care for them unless it’s not some Stonehenge we are talking about. Well, guess what, not only Stonehenge has awesome rocks.
We know another place where not only rocks look appealing, but where rocks come with big wins attached. Still doubt such a place exists, well don’t, as there is the Secret of the Stones by NetEnt coming our way.
By the look of it, the slot doesn’t exactly look breathtaking. It’s just a bunch of rocks for crying out loud! And the gameplay is extremely standard, and some say standard is boring. Well, 25 lines per 5 reels do sound boring, until you count your odds!
The slot’s layout is standard as well as the basic play rules. Nothing new here, just hit the combos and win if you did it right, meaning from the first reel only and the number of tiles in the combo is at least three.
The paytiles come in two groups: borrowed and themed ones. The borrowed tiles are card symbols featuring 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces. The minimal combo for them is three, and the maximum is five of one kind. The 10s are paid 50x for the five of one kind combo. Jacks are worth 75x for five.
The max combos of Aces, Kings and Queens are paid 150x, 125x and 100x, respectively. The themed symbols are paid more. All of them are stones carved with animals. The Snake is worth 200x for five. The max Wolf combo is paid 300x. Five Bulls are paid 500x. Five Deer or Owls are paid 1,250x and 750x, respectively.
The bonus features here are standard wilds and scatters. The substitute otherwise known as the Wild is the tile with an Old Wise Man. As usual, it replaces missing tiles to form a winning combination. It can’t take place only of another bonus symbol, the Scatter. If there is a wild in your winning combo, it will be paid as the highest combo for this type of symbols according to the paytable.
The Scatter tile here is an icon with a Tree. You have to hit at least three of those to activate the free-games mode. There are 10 spins on the house, but they come with extra perks you get to choose yourself. Right before the free games begin, you may pick extra features yourself from a bunch of rocks.
This pick-me feature is random, all you need is to pick several stones out of 20. The number of picks equals to the number of Scatters you have hit. For three scatters you get to make three picks, etc.
So what is there, hidden under the rocks? There might be four possible extras. First, you may get extra spins for free, you may pick a multiplier and find yourself not with just 10 spins, but with 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100. You may also get a multiplier for the free-spin winnings.
If you hit the right stone, your wins might get increased by 1x or 2x. The third option is the Wild reels. Pick it and the 2nd or/and the 4th reels will turn into stacked wilds. The fourth and the last option is the extra wilds perk. If you hit it, your Owls and Deer tiles will turn into Wilds for the free-spins’ session.
The betting at Secret of the Stones is typical for NetEnt. You pick the value of one coin, which may be worth from 0.01 to 0.50. Then choose one out of ten possible betting levels. After, you may spin. Thus, your max bet for one spin may be worth 125. The minimal spin wager is only 0.25.
Frankly, the slot seems rather boring. The gameplay is basic and the stones, well they are stones, what to expect from them?! But we enjoyed the bonus feature a lot. Diversified free spins are intriguing and fun.
What’s more, the game comes with a Max mode that promises higher payouts, more multipliers and stacked wilds! So playing with a bunch of rocks may turn out to be quite a good pastime idea after all!