Dream Date

Now here’s a title aimed towards the gentler sex, filled with romance, hunky guys and a sickeningly sweet tune that you could find in that one romance movie your significant other usually adores watching. We have to admit, finding true love on the field of online slots never occurred to us, but we suppose that’s where we’ve gone wrong all our lives.

Still, nice of Microgaming to give our female players something to indulge in that breaks the constant stream of action, horror and mystery that most titles seem happy to put forward as their theme. Dream Date offers players a 5×3 playing field with 243 ways to win. For special features, you have hot zones, which are used to reward cash prizes and free spins. Free spins can also be activated through the regular Scatter prize. Finally, Wilds on the third reel will expand vertically to fill the reel and double any wins during the free spins feature.

Dream Date is somewhat interesting in that it’s a visually driven title. It’s not the most impressive visually – it’s fair to say that it’s far from the most impressive graphics Microgaming themselves have put out. And yet, the title has the option of changing between eras, which essentially gives gamblers two different backdrops and several symbols which have to have both modern and old timey counterparts. Even the music switches around when you change eras, from the overwhelming romantic tune to a far more enjoyable jazzy tune which we found much healthier for our mental state.

What about gameplay? Well, a big portion of Dream Date is defined by Hot Spots, which appear in the middle of the first and fifth reel. They can reward cash prizes when the date and the dame appear on the first and fifth reel at the same time, and if the character you chose as your dream date lands there, it will also reward a feature. Obviously, you can carry wins without it, but it’s something we found quite game defining.

You can play Dream Date for as little as $0.15 up to a maximum of $60 per spin, which is a rather impressive bet level spread, giving access to both lower end gamblers and high rollers looking to bet big and win bigger. There are some decent scores, such as being able to win up to 40x your wager at random if two symbols land in the correct spot on top of any wins you might have collected otherwise, and the special features are always bound to leave you in a plus. The theoretical maximum win is 1,800x your wager, which is pretty good for a medium variance title.

The icons are split into lower paying symbols, which are gemstones in the shape of a card suit – spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds, with a circle thrown into the mix. All of these have a different shape and colour, making them distinct, although unremarkable for the most part. The dates and the dame, on the other hand, both have a unique design. In fact, they have two, as they completely change during the era swap. You can win free spins either by collecting three or more Scatters, or by arranging so the date and her chosen dream date land in the hotspots on the first and fifth reel. Both of these reward eight free spins, and if you somehow manage to succeed to get them both at the same time, you are rewarded with sixteen free spins.