Orca Slot Machine
For those who appreciate the wonders of the ocean, a slot machine after your very heart has been designed. It’s called Orca, it’s been made by the developer Novomatic and in case you’re still in any doubt, it’s a game about orcas, also known as killer whales. Go figure.
Orca presents you with a chance to explore beautiful sea caves and wonder at forms of underwater wildlife. In a manner of speaking, anyway. With 5 reels, three rows and a maximum of 50 paylines, this is a simple pokie game to play – but the winnings on offer are certainly alluring; players can hit a jackpot of 1,000x their initial bet.
Getting To Grips
You can select how much you want to bet and the pay-lines you wish to wager on using the buttons on the centre of the control panel. You can also choose the autoplay option if you want to kick back and allow the game to take care of itself while you admire the sub-aquatic scenery. As is the case with almost all Novomatic games, there’s a gamble function, which appears whenever you make a winning bet. Nothing like familiarity, huh?
Under The Sea
If you’re a fan of underwater documentaries or tropical fish, you’ll certainly enjoy the scenery on display in this game. Behind the reels lurk the wonders of the deep, with colourful marine life flitting past and rays of light knifing through the surface of the water. It’s pretty rare to come across a slot game that instills a sense of serenity, but Orca certainly ticks this box. The symbols in the also serve to create a sense of underwater calmness.
An orca jumping in front of a sunset and a small group of penguins are among the higher value symbols in the game. Land five orcas and you’ll be rewarded with 200,000. Four orcas pays 40,000 while three pays 8,000. Five penguins, meanwhile, pays 100,000.
Other symbols include the usual playing cards, from 9 through to A, a trio of sea lions and a couple of unidentified fish.
Create A Splash
While you’re relaxing and enjoying bobbing about in the waves, there’s always the chance that you’ll get a little boost from a round of free spins. You can win free spins by landing the scatter symbols on three of the reels at the same time. The scatter symbol is represented by an orca's fin emerging from the water.
When you hit a trio of scatter symbols, you’ll automatically be given 10 free spins. During these spins, there will be more wilds than normal to help boost the odds of you landing some big winnings. Not only that, but if you get five scatter symbols on the reels during your free spins, you’ll be awarded even more free spins. Extra wilds also come into play on these spins, and a free spins round can be re-triggered once.
The wild symbol, incidentally, is represented by a golden Mayan mask. It’s somewhat odd as, so far as we know, Mayans have no relation to orcas; but what the hell, the wild substitutes for all symbols to configure winning combinations. The wild cannot, however, substitute for the orca’s fin scatter.
Ride The Wave
If you feel the game doesn’t have enough excitement, there’s something you can do about that. Whenever you win on a bet, the gamble button will appear on the control panel. If you choose this option, you will be taken to a bonus game where you must guess the colour of the next card drawn from the deck. If you guess correctly, your winnings on the last spin will be multiplied x2. If you have the nerve to guess again, your ballsiness will be rewarded with a x5 multiplier. If you’re wrong, though, you’ll throw away the multiplier and the amount you won in the spin as well.
Orca Time
If you're looking for quite a serene and attractive slot machine game, Orca could well be ideal for you. The graphics are basic but bright, the free spins are welcome and the gameplay, overall, is decent. At the same time, one can’t help but lust after more: more innovation, more bonus features, more free spins. The inclusion of a Mayan mask as a wild is also pretty weird given this game doesn't have a Mayan theme. Why go to the effort of coming up with a themed slot when you can’t make your wild correspond?
