Vortex Slot Machine
A sharp-dressed Victorian gentleman has invented a time machine and takes you back and forth across the ages in the Vortex video slot from Octavian Gaming. Dinosaurs and robots are waiting at either end of this adventure and there’s fantastic bits of machinery to help you on this quest for winnings. It comes with 5 reels where the symbols are in 3 rows, and you can play across 10 paylines, winning a prize when 3 or more of the same symbol are seen on adjacent reels across any line. There’s also special wild symbols that can act as others if they can then complete win-lines, while entering the Vortex symbols take you to prehistoric times or the far future, where free spins await.
It's a Steampunk-style slot, where old meets new and like most games from this company, it looks great, with animations of roaring dinosaurs and swirling vortexes livening up the reels. Octavian Gaming like to add little details to each of their slots, and Vortex sets the reels against the scientists’ glass domed lab and to add to the overall style, it has the control buttons in amongst the controls for his time machine. Whenever symbols become part of a win, they get highlighted by bolts of electricity flashing between conductors, which is a nice visual treat to accompany the reward.
The Octavian Gaming company is based in Verona Italy, and while they have become known for their range of slots and cabinets for the land-based casino business, their venture into the online world is still relatively young, so they have lots to prove with slots such as Vortex. Let’s climb aboard the time machine and see if they have a bright future ahead of them, or if they are living in the past.
Into the Vortex
Along with a cylindrical brass date counter, the high-paying symbols include a photo of the travellers’ girl, a blue-glowing orb, and we can see that he’s taking precautions by bringing a gun along for the ride. The lower-value symbols are the J, Q, K and A playing card icons, each nicely styled to look like the filaments in Edison light bulbs. Our time travelling adventurer, with his dashing moustache, pays the most and you win a prize any time 3 or more of the same symbol are seen across a payline, without a gap in the sequence.
A roaring T-Rex is a wild symbol that helps punters collect extra wins by substituting for any of those above if it’s in the right places to complete a line, although it doesn’t have a value of its own and can’t act as the swirling vortex.
In time for free Spins
If the vortex stops in any 2 or more places at once, without needing to be across a payline, you can decide where in time you want to go for a free spins bonus round. You can either play the Dino Spins, or the Cyber Spins, and have either the T-Rex or a female robot acting as an additional wild symbol throughout the feature.
They will also be able to expand across any reels that they land on, and the bonus games can be retriggered by more vortex symbols, which should see you returning from the past or future with some extra coins.
Bet Options
You can stake as little as 0.01 per spin, but for this amount, just a single payline will be active, so you won’t gain anything from most winning lines that are seen. A wager of 0.10 is needed to play for real cash, and this can be raised in stages to a maximum bet of 20.00 per spin. Wins are calculated as multiples of the amount staked on each line, so at higher stakes, you are going to get higher returns.
Other control buttons trigger an Autoplay feature, which removes the monotony of having to click a button each time you want the reels to spin, while the Quick Spin mode does just what it says and speeds things up a little.
Steampunk Styles Games
The Steampunk and sci-fi genre has been popular with slot developers and players alike, and we now have a number of games where the Victorian view of the future is featured. Jules Verne, who wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the original Time Machine book, is seen as the father of Steampunk and his influence is found in games such as Steampunk Nation from 888.
In this 5-reel, 25-line game, elaborately designed weapons, a couple of strangely dressed characters and sci-fi style airships are seen against a backdrop of cogs, pipes and other weird bits of machinery. Even the playing card symbols consist of gears and valves, which gives this slot machine some great visuals.
The gameplay awards you with wild multipliers, while the symbol of a retro-future city is the scatter icon that triggers up to 50 free spins. A progressive jackpot is the icing on the cake of this exciting game, and while there’s no free Vortex video slots available, 888 lets punters practice Steampunk Nation without making any wagers.
A cartoon Einstein character oversees the action of Ash Gaming’s Time Machine video slot, which takes players through 5 bonus features, each set in a different era. When the plutonium symbol appears, an energy meter is gradually filled and once you supply of power is at the top, you can travel through time, collecting artefacts along the way. Travellers can pick dinosaur eggs for win multipliers, enter a Roman chariot race, fight WW2 battleships for prizes, or enjoy the 1960’s, where a hippy band will award some groovy winnings.
A Classic Adventure?
While the Vortex video slot won’t actually take us through time, it can still bring a sense of adventure to desktop computers as well as Android powered or iPhone mobile devices. In common with all Octavian Gaming slots, this game has been certified for fairness by independent testing labs, so punters can play safe in the knowledge that they will see randomly generated results and high returns.
High-quality animations and well-designed symbols create the right atmosphere in the Vortex game, while the abundance of features creates lots of opportunities to collect some cash prizes.
Wild symbol wins are a nice way to complete paylines but this slot game is all about the Vortex and the exciting places that it takes us to. Having extra treats like the expanding wild symbols will make these free spins features more rewarding places to be, so fire up the Flux Capacitor and head over to online casinos that carry the Octavian Gaming collection to see where the Vortex takes you.
