Journey to the Gold

If you’ve never been to the Zhangjiajie national park, you are seriously missing out!

It is perfectly understandable that not everyone has the opportunity to visit this magical place and its impressive mountain ranges. Fortunately for us…

…Ganapati offers a small glimpse of that landscape in its game called – Journey to the Gold.

There are two things you should know about this title:

1. It’s made by one of the most reputable studios when it comes to User Interface design
2. It features an awesome mini-game locked behind the game’s rather unique mechanic

In case you are familiar with this software provider, you probably know that their slot games are highly polished and based around positive user experience.

The same applies to this title. We’ve had high expectations, which were not only met but also exceeded!

A Theme Straight From the Clouds

Mountains peaks surrounded by clouds is one of those rare treats mother nature sometimes gives us. Using such an awe-inspiring scenery as the theme for a slot game makes the entire package attractive right off the bat.

The background looks like something you’d find on traditional Oriental fans. The artwork sits somewhere between the modern cartoon style and old school art forms from this part of the world. In other words – stunning!

While the theme itself leaves nothing to be desired, they didn’t go overboard with details and graphics. There is no clutter that could have a negative impact on your user experience. On the contrary…

…the entire theme is clean and crisp!

We’ve already mentioned that the studio behind this title goes all out in terms of graphics and animation. The same applies to Journey to the Gold.

You will a bunch of awesome little graphical elements that have no other purpose than to make the game look more attractive.

On the right, next to the reels, we see the main character of the game sitting on his own, personal cloud. The Monkey King is fully animated and reacts to different outcomes of the game. Not only that, but his face is also used for the wild symbol.

Betting Options and Functionality

The core game uses 5 reels divided across 4 rows. The estimated RTP is 96.82 with the starting balance of 200,000 credits!

Bet size can be set anywhere from 0.40 credits up to 20 credits. When you add 40 fixed pay-lines, you end up with a rather formidable core game.

We have already mentioned that the wild symbol depicts the main character. As usual, the wild replaces any other symbol except for the scatter. Speaking of which…

…the scatter comes in the form of a Buddhist monk figure placed in what appears to be a lotus flower. If you get 3, 4 or 5 scatter symbols , you will trigger 5, 7 and 9 free spins respectively.

Once in free spin mode, the last reel to the right turns into a wild reel and behaves just like the wild symbol would!

Everything mentioned so far falls within the base game. As you’re about to find out, we’ve only scratched the surface!

Special Features

Special features in modern slot game titles range from simple ones to not so simple ones. That being said, rarely do we see truly unique creations that double the replay value of a game. This Ganapati’s creation belongs to that very small group of games that have two special feature mini-games!

The first one is the Monkey King’s Re-spins:

Each wild symbol carries a stone that is either red, green or blue. These stones correspond to the collection board located on the left side of your screen. Once you collect a stone, it will be added to the board and trigger a re-spin.

You can trigger up to three more re-spins this way!

If you manage to collect all of the stones, you will gain access to the other special feature called Zap A Bull Demon King!

The mini-game takes you to a different screen populated with Bull Demons. You are awarded three initial hits, but you can win the chance to hit the demon 2 more times if you’re lucky.

Our Take

We have to reiterate just how rare it is to find a game that has this amount of content and value! Not only are you getting a rock-solid core game experience…

…but those two additional special features really seal the deal on this one. Everything about this title leads us to believe that it could become the next crowd favorite.