Princess Chintana Slots
While a lot of Zeus Gaming’s titles have a pretty regular theme and format with Magic 7 Deluxe for example, Princess Chintana is a game quite unlike anything the vast majority of video slot players will have experienced before.
Somewhat unusually, the game features 9 reels and 10 paylines – with prizes awarded for matching consecutive symbols anywhere on a payline, rather than strictly from left-to-right or right-to-left – making it both a visually striking title and one that takes some getting used to when you first begin.
Thankfully, Princess Chintana still upholds Zeus Gaming’s tradition of simplicity over style, so despite its initially daunting appearance, you’ll soon get to grips with the game as you spin your way to a maximum regular jackpot of 5,000x your stake per line and some great bonus features to boot.
Call Of The Wild
Despite its 9 reels filling your screen and dazzling your senses, there’s actually not a lot in the basic game mechanics of Princess Chintana to leave players in too much a spin. Like a lot of Zeus Gaming titles, players can adjust the number of lines they want to be active and the bet amount per line, meaning they can wager anywhere between one and 500 coins per spin.
Payouts range from double your stake per line for three ten, jack or queen symbols to 5,000x your stake per line for five icons of Princess Chintana, while the wigwam icon acts as both the wild and scatter symbol, meaning that it can substitute for any regular symbol and trigger the bonus feature.
One major issue we have with Princess Chintana comes in the form of the information displayed in its payout table. Rather than saying how many symbols you need to match, Zeus Gaming have opted to rank the levels of payout in ascending order. This is hugely confusing as it’s all very well knowing the top award is 5,000x, but it means nothing if you don’t know how many icons you need to win it.
Going Native
Once you’ve got to grips with the fact that there are 9 reels spinning at all times in Princess Chintana, you’ll start noticing that there’s actually not that much in the way of graphical flourishes to distinguish it from other games. There are ten symbols in total and half of them are nondescript playing card icons, with only the higher-value symbols keeping with the game’s Native Indian theme.
Among the unique icons you’ll find a pair of tomahawks, a wolf, a traditional headdress and Princess Chintana herself – who, for the record, looks inappropriately white – and each of these symbols has its own special animation when it features in a winning payline. Beyond that, however, the graphics used in the game look dated and there’s really not that much that will leave a lasting impression.
The audio featured is also fairly basic, with the sounds of the tribe playing whenever you spin the reels and a handful of standard casino sound effects used to signify winning paylines and payouts.
Tribal Warfare
Princess Chintana includes one bonus feature that is triggered whenever three or more wigwam scatter symbols appear anywhere across the game’s 9 reels. Once activated, a new screen appears where players are assigned both an extra expanding wild symbol and a number of bonus spins.
Given the free spins on offer range from five to 20, this can prove to be quite a lucrative feature – especially when you consider that with 9 reels, your chances of landing three or more expanding wild symbols and filling the board are significantly higher than in most conventional 5 reel slot titles.
As with all Zeus Gaming titles, all winnings in Princess Chintana can be gambled in a simple red or black game. When utilising this option, players will have the option to double their current prize an almost unlimited number of times, but should they get it wrong, they’ll forfeit the entire amount.
No Scalps Here
Unfortunately, once you get past the fact that Princess Chintana features an unusual configuration of 9 reels, there’s really not all that much going for the game save for its bonus round. The rules are badly explained (honestly, if it weren’t for this review you’d have no idea how the paylines were actually configured) and a lack of visual flair means it’s a largely underwhelming effort all round.
