Ice Land Slots
Coming directly from the talented team at NeoGames comes the rather plainly named Ice Land, a video slots game that takes place in a bright, cheery snow-covered world.
The game itself looks as though it has come straight from a kid’s cartoon – the use of cartoonish anthropomorphised animals and the simple graphical design makes this look like it was designed to appeal to the kid inside all of us. Indeed, Ice Land’s graphical style would be more fitting for a child’s game than anything else. But of course, many people (like myself) enjoy that fact that this game carries an innocent touch.
The presentation of this game is certainly effective at drawing you in and holding your attention, but what is the gameplay like? Read on to find out!
Slide Across the Icy Floor
Have you ever played Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES (or its excellent remake on the SNES)? The game consists of the titular hero going through eight worlds to save the princess, with one of them being a winter wonderland filled with snow, frozen lakes, and dormant trees. As you can gather this game immediately reminded me of the world that Mario conquered back in the day.
While we doubt the makers of this game drew upon the Mario franchise for its influence, the game still possess a whimsical and child-like charm to its visuals, evoking the “white Christmas” that makes many people feel wistful with nostalgia.
The first aspect of Ice Land that caught our attention was the fact that it boasts a really clean interface – the vector-style graphics in use give the game a simple but very neat appearance, lending the game a very organised and methodical outlook. That said, the use of cute animals and the Jon Arbuckle wannabe in the corner make the game cute and appealing to anybody looking for a quick spin, but of course that very fact belies the nature of the gameplay that lies within. Ice Land appears to take place alongside a mountain. The colour blue is used very heavily, which makes the occasional notes of yellow and red stand out all the more. The characters on the reels reflect many of the wildlife commonly seen in arctic and sub-arctic regions of the world.
Falling Beneath the Ice
Let’s move on to the technical side of things. Ice Land utilises a standard 5x3 reel setup and nine paylines. This is somewhat offset by the fact that the game allows you to set the coin denomination up to 10 units of currency per coin (with a minimum of 0.1), allowing for a maximum bet size of 90 units of currency per spin. The bottom-left button lets you access the pay table as well as the help screens, and the middle button lets you adjust the bet size and number of paylines in play, respectively. The center-right button lets you spin for the maximum bet, and the right-most button lets you spin the reel. In the bottom-right corner is the auto-spin function, allowing you to customize it as you see fit. There are wild and scatter symbols in play, but no opportunities to win free spins.
Sitting Atop the Mountain
Ice Land doesn’t offer a progressive jackpot, but it does offer a whole host of other ways to walk away with a big payday. For one, there is a base jackpot of 10,000 coins. This means that you can win up to 100,000 coins if you bet the maximum amount!
There isn’t a bonus game, but there is a really big score multiplier that you can win. Wins obtained by a wild symbol double your take-home prize. Getting scatter symbols also increases your win size as well, potentially boosting your earnings by as much as 32x if you get a total of five on any active paylines.
The ‘Coolest’ Slots Game Around
Ice Land stands on its own as a solid, if somewhat sparse, video slots game that casual gamblers will love and hardcore gamblers will enjoy as well. The lack of a bonus game or free spins may deter some people from wanting to play, but you shouldn’t stay away from the game on that basis alone. The huge jackpots coupled with the awesome prizes offered by the scatter and wild symbols mean that for all of its cute and bright looks, Ice Land doesn’t skimp on the winnings potential.
If you’re looking for a solid game of video slots that won’t break the bank, Ice Land will be right up your alley.
