Volcanic Cash Slots
The premise of the Volcanic Cash video slot from Novomatic is simple; real simple. Essentially it involves cavemen attempting to flee an erupting volcano (who can blame them?). While they save their skins, you’ll be left with a more pressing preoccupation – trying to figure out how you can hit the jackpot from the safety of your online casino. There might be nothing to buy in this Stone Age town when it’s subsumed in molten lava, but hey, you can always crawl out of the magma and catch a foot-powered stone-and-wood cab to the next town.
The symbols in this 5-reel slot are almost embarrassingly simple. They look like they’ve been hurriedly sketched by pre-schoolers, not painstakingly designed by software gurus at the Novomatic HQ. Still, it’s all fun and games; or that’s the idea, anyway. Besides, if you want majestic graphics and awe-inspiring gameplay, what the hell are you doing playing video slots? It’s all about the Benjamins, baby, and Volcanic Cash boasts 20 paylines – 11 more than most Novomatic titles.
Volcanic Cartoons
Novomatic clearly put more effort into some of their games than others – at least where graphics are concerned. Games like Ultra Hot, Lucky Lady’s Charm and Reel King clearly got made with whatever was left of the annual budget. Titles such as Book of Ra, Lord of the Ocean and Katana were a little more sophisticated.
Stick Volcanic Cash in the former category. There’s no two ways about it, expense has been spared in the making of this game. The reels are transparent, all five separated by a vertical chain of white bones. In the background is a cartoonised grey volcano that seems on the verge of eruption. VOLCANIC ASH is stamped in orange lettering at the rim. It’s all very “kid’s drawing on the fridge door”. But it’s also kinda funny.
The symbols in the game follow the theme. There’s a caveman who – let’s just come out and say it – is a Doppelg?nger of Fred Flintstone. There’s a goofy green dinosaur, an egg, a bushy-haired female (what was Fred’s wife called again?) and a bunch of multi-coloured playing card symbols. There’s also a wild; you know it’s wild because it’s simply the word WILD superimposed over a grey rock.
Free Spins Galore
One of the areas where this game excels is free spins. While many Novomatic games offer this feature, Volcanic Cash kicks things up a gear by providing two methods of obtaining them. The first is the more traditional method – you know, hit a few scatter symbols (in this case, the volcano) and away you go. Refreshingly, the number of free spins increases the more scatters you land. Three of them buys you five freebies, while four yields 20 and five generates 25.
You can win more free spins – during free spins – by utilising the special lava wild, which pops up on reels two, three and four. Essentially during free spins, then, you are looking out for two different kinds of wild. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that free spins are the key to big wins on Volcanic Cash.
Risky Business
If you want to inject a bit of excitement into your game (as if fleeing a volcano isn’t enough excitement for one day), the gamble feature could be just what you need. This bonus game can be accessed whenever you make a winning bet, whereupon the gamble button on the control panel illuminates.
The game feature is nothing new; indeed, it is included in virtually all Novomatic games. Simply guess the colour of a random card – red or black – to double up or squander your winnings. If you guess correct, and the x2 multiplier doesn’t satisfy your lust for a life lived on the edge, you can opt to guess the colour of the card again. Get it right a second time and you’ll be rewarded with an impressive 5x multiplier.
Red-hot Volcano
All Novomatic games share certain similarities and Volcanic Cash is no different. The gamble feature is in place, the free spins are accounted for and wilds and scatter symbols are, as ever, in the mix. With 20 paylines, there’s a little more juice than most Novomatic games, so if you want to play a cartoonish slot about the Stone Age, this could be the one. On the downside, the lack of a multiplier and a bonus game is to title’s detriment. Must do better to really be amongst the top online slot games.
