Jumanji

Usually, board games are good, family fun. You open them up, play a few rounds, toss the board over after the aforementioned game is clearly rigged and then the process repeats the next week. Of course, maybe your family isn’t quite as competitive as ours and it may be a calmer affair, but we’re willing to bet that despite the unspeakable incident involving a glass cabinet and a pair of dice, most people find board games relaxing and fun – and not something that’ll swallow you up whole and keep you trapped for thirty years in a proverbial jungle until you’re accidentally rescued by strangers and have to find your traumatized old friend to help you finish a cursed board game. Jumanji was quite an interesting idea for its time, but we can’t say we ever expected it to see a slot named after it. It offers a 3-4-5-4-3 playing field with 36 fixed paylines and a mountain of features, most of which are copies of each other which we feel have most likely been designed to pad out the number of features.

Given that this is a licensed title, it’s no surprise that NetEnt went all out when it comes to the graphics. The backdrop being the actual Jumanji board game is pretty cool and it can effectively surround the reels thanks to their unique layout. You can occasionally see an incest flying by or the monkeys off to the side scheming their next move. The animations for the special features in this title are legendary. While we wouldn’t say it’s the best game NetEnt made visually, it’s very close to the top.

On the gameplay side of things, Jumanji is all about the many special features that lay within the title. You have four of them which you can access during normal gameplay, and then the same four are cloned on top of the free spins bonuses. While we’re not particularly amazed with that kind of move, we’re also grateful that all those features are also available during normal gameplay, which prevents things from getting too stale. Alongside a low to medium volatility, you’ll probably see frequent small wins fill your board, which makes this title friendlier for beginners and newbies rather than more seasoned slot players.

You can play Jumanji for as little as $0.10 up to a whopping $200, which should please both casual gamblers and high rollers alike. However, the highest possible win sits at 504x the wager, which we imagine may not appease gamblers going for the biggest wins. It reinforces our thoughts on this slot being more geared towards new players. The RTP of 96.33% sits above average for these sorts of games, and the low volatility comes into play that you won’t see huge losses playing according to your budget, but by proxy, you can’t really expect any huge wins, either.

The symbols are a mixed bag. The four animals prominently featured in the movie as tokens on the board game are also present as icons on the playing field, and they look quite regal and fierce in their appearance. You also have playing card symbols J, Q, K and A, which, alongside Wild which simply spells out the word Wild, don’t do any favours for any attempts at immersing players into the title. It really ruins the effort the rest of the awesome graphics do elsewhere, making it seem more generic.

There are four special features. Sticky Vines will grip a single symbol and cause re-spins until no more of that icon appears to be gripped, or the whole reel is filled with that one symbol. Monsoon Wilds will cover one or two reels with Wilds in entirety. Monkey Mayhem will rearrange a losing playing field into a winning one and finally, Wild Stampede will place between four to nine Wilds on the reels.

On top of this, you can also activate the free spins, which you do by rolling three, four or five Scatters, which rewards you with six, seven or eight dice rolls. Depending on your dice throws, you can control your animal token across the board game, and each time you reach a corner, you activate one of the free spins bonuses which are infused with the special features we mentioned above.