Kim’s Wild Journey

Kim’s Wild Journey Overview

Launched in February this year, Kim’s Wild Journey is one of the more exciting products to have come from the Booming Games studio. It follows the perilous and exciting journey of Kim, an intrepid explorer on the hunt for ancient treasures in exotic lands. It joins a long line of slot games themed around the Indiana Jones stereotype of western explorers. Mechanically, this game is a five-reel, four-row game with 25 pay lines. The maximum payout that players can receive from one spin in this game is 15,846x the stake, and the RTP is 95.40%.

Kim’s Wild Journey features start with a cascading reels dynamic that replaces winning symbols with a new set, giving players multiple chances of scoring wins from the same spin. This game also has a wild bonus. Wilds are symbols that substitute for other regular symbols to help form wins. The more cascades that are triggered consecutively, the more of these icons will be added to the reels, assisting players in scoring more wins. Finally, this game also has a free spins game triggered by landing three or more scatter symbols on the reels simultaneously. The more scatters you land; the more spins are granted to you. All features will be explained in more detail later in the review.

Theme and Symbols

The thematic narrative for this slot is that Kim – our brave explorer, is journeying around the globe looking for rare and ancient artefacts which could be worth a great deal of money. Unlike other explorer themed slots, this game doesn’t seem to have committed to a specific location, such as Egypt or Mexico. Instead, the designers have left the setting quite vague. Explorer slots are very popular, and it seems that every provider has at least a few in their ranks. At least this one is of decent quality with some good graphics and a fun titular character.

We hypothesise that the background for this slot is a cave opening in Turkey or perhaps Jordan, looking out onto an arid and mountainous environment. This would lead us to believe that the background is inspired by the film, Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, shot in part in Petra, an amazing location in Jordan in the middle east. The sunny and sandy setting is a perfect one for Kim to look around for golden treasures.
The playing board is a sandstone construction that looks to be a natural part of the cave it sits within.

The symbols for this game are split into low-paying, high-paying and special symbols. The low-paying symbols are the 10, J, Q, K and A in playing card royals. The A is the most valuable of these, worth 2x the stake for the top combination. On the other hand, the more valuable symbols are the pipe, the binoculars, the map, and Kim herself. Kim is the most valuable symbol in the game, worth 12.5x the stake for the top combination. The specials included here are the golden chest free spins scatter and the wild icon.

Game Play

Kim’s Wild Journey is played on a 5-reel, 4-row machine with 25 fixed pay lines. To win combinations, players must land three or more matching symbols on pay lines moving from left to right, starting from the leftmost reel.

The betting range for Kim’s Wild Journey is 20p to £10 per spin. To adjust their bet levels, players can toggle their stake up and down using the tool located at the bottom left-hand side of the screen.
Further information, including a short tutorial and a display of the paytable, can be found via the menu button in the right-hand corner of the screen. The spin and auto spin buttons are located in the centre of the screen.
Volatility for this slot is rated in the high range. The return to player percentage for Kim’s Wild Journey is 95.4%, which is below average. The biggest payout that players can win on one spin is 15,846x your stake.

Features

The first feature here is the cascading reels bonus, triggered every time a player registers a win. All the winning symbols are removed from the reels and replaced by a new set when this happens. This gives players multiple chances of scoring a win from the same spin. The dynamic will only stop when the new set of symbols does not form a win.
The next feature included in this game is the wild feature. Wilds substitute for other standard symbols to help players score more wins. The number of wilds dropped onto the board increases with every successful cascade.

However, the main feature here is the free spins game, triggered when players land three or more of the scatter symbols on the reels simultaneously. During the free spins round, scatter collectors are in operation. For every three of these symbols collected, you will receive an upgrade to the size of the multipliers attached to the wilds present on the board. Doing this will also earn you two extra spins.
This modifying function has three levels, with the top multiplier achievable sitting at 6x the stake.

Conclusion

There is plenty to like about this game. The features are fun and varied, the theme is well polished and attractive, and the gaming experience provides plenty of twists and turns. However, things could be a little better in terms of winning potential. The RTP is very poor, the top win isn’t great, and the volatility keeps features at arm’s length most of the time. This is annoying as otherwise, we really enjoyed this game.