Dinosaur Rage

Overview of Dinosaur Rage

Dinosaur Rage is the latest slot from the developers at Quickspin and it is the second time out for the heroine Anna and her trademark raven hair. The first slot that featured Anna was Ark of Mystery where she scoured through the ruins in Ancient Egypt. This time around Anna has gone back in time where dinosaurs roamed free and ruled the earth. There is no real explanation of how she got there all we do know is that she is battling with these giant beasts with just a machete to defend herself. When it comes to winnings you will be pleased to hear that there are far more wins available in this second slot as it makes use of the pay-anywhere symbols, free spins, nudges, and multipliers.

There is a great story behind this slot which I feel I should share, Quickspin begun this journey by looking at the slot Tiger’s Glory to see how they could change and re-use their pay anywhere mechanic. The theme followed on from this and as you probably know lots of children go through a phase where they are fascinated by all thing’s dinosaur, but this slot is proof that it is not just children that are fascinated, Ross Gellar and one of the Quickspin artists are also fixated with these phenomenal beasts. Combine these things and what do you get? Dinosaur Rage!

Design & Symbols

This entire slot is a work of passion and turns out to be Anna’s too, and what is amazing is that Anna has not aged since her first outing, if anything she has a real radiant look and is easy on the eye. The rest of the game is just as well designed with a bright prehistoric styled background, silky animations and a several great effects. When all of this is integrated with the title letters and giant dinosaur styled lizards and you have a mix of Jurassic Park meets Lara Croft! There will be players that are not enamoured with the graphics and Quickspin do tend to go for more childish artwork that is not everyone’s cup of tea.

When it comes to the symbols unsurprisingly Anna is the most valuable and will reward you with 5x the bet when you land five of a kind in 1x4 size, however if Anna lands totally in view then you get paid out regardless of where she lands on the screen. The four dinosaurs are premium symbols and appear in sizes 1x2 – 1x4 and are worth 1.75x to 2.5x your bet for landing 5. The dinosaurs will only pay out when they are angry, but we will cover this further down. Quite fitting is that the lower value playing card symbols 10 through to Ace have been designed using bones and teeth!

Gameplay

When it comes to the game play the slot plays out over 5-reels and offers 1,024 ways to pay. The volatility matches the ranging dinosaurs and is rated by the developers as 5 out of 5 in other words as high as it gets. This will suit dedicated gamblers as will the return to player that stands at a decent default of 96.11% and rises even further if you choose to take advantage of the feature buy. The feature buy is incredibly tempting considering what it has to offer, however the base game does have a few tricks up its sleeve. The slot can be played on all devices and the bet range is wide enough to appeal to a wide array of players as it starts from just 20p per spin up to a maximum of £100 per spin.

Features

The developers at Quickspin have used the pay anywhere symbols to perform tricks and as such you can expect to see them appearing in the free spins as well as the base game although to a lesser degree. Pay anywhere means exactly that the symbols pay out for the number of times they appear, and they do not need to be next to each other, however in the base game this will only happen when Anna covers the whole reel. The Anna symbols can also be nudged at random to cover the whole reel and this helps to activate the feature.

The pay- anywhere mechanic bursts into life during the Dinosaur Rage! Free Spins which are activated when you land three or more scatters in view. Landing 3, 4, or 5, scatters in view will reward you with 10, 15, or 25, free spins and you will also receive 1, 2, or 3, upgrades, respectively.

With every upgrade a random dinosaur becomes angry which means that they get the pay anywhere capability. Scatters are available during the bonus therefore landing three or more will reward you with the number of free spins and each upgrade increases the win multiplier by +1.

Dinosaur Rage does have a bonus buy feature however, this can be dependent on where you play so it is worth checking this before you start. There are two optional bonus buys the first will cost you 75x your bet and will reward you with 3 scatters on the next spin and the other will cost you 150x your bet and rewards you with 4 scatters on the next spin. Better still is when you engage the bonus buy feature the return to player increases to 96.75% and 96.95% and apart from this the bonus game plays out the same as it does when you activate it without the buy in.

Conclusion

Considering that Anna began her slot debut in Ancient Egypt which to be fair is where most slot adventurers start, she fares well in this slot. Her debut in Ark of Mystery marked a transition in time for this developer as they upped the volatility and territory and they have pushed things even further with this slot.

The aesthetics are a mixture of terror and sex appeal and create an enjoyable feel and the audio-visual is high but that is what players have come to expect from Quickspin. The features are well designed with the pay anywhere mechanic, multiple free spins, and multipliers. When I tested the slot, the base game lacked a little in the excitement stakes but once the multipliers increase the slot got rather tense and incredibly exciting as the win could have reached 17,794x your stake.
To me this sequel is far superior to Ark of Mystery and I would rate this as a solid 8/10 as it is a highly entertaining trip back in time with this excellent sequel.