Tiger Rush

One of the complaints that some players have about a lot of different online slots is that the bonus features can seem so inaccessible and difficult to trigger. The Tiger Rush slot from Thunderkick offers players an opportunity to more easily get different features based around a free spins motif while still retaining a fair amount of value for the features themselves thanks to a smart use of different in-game formats. The theme of the game looks great as well and follows tigers in a bamboo jungle with a bit of an Asian flavor.

Format and Layout

There are actually two different formats used in this game. We'll explain the second one down below, but the main one that you'll see most of the time has five vertical reels, three horizontal rows and 10 paylines that pay from left to right only. This lends itself to the availability of some pretty small bet sizes that go down to the $0.10 level. However, there are 14 different options from there to the maximum of $100 per spin, so you'll have no issue with picking one out that fits what you're comfortable with.

Wild Tiger Symbol

From the title of the game comes the tiger wild symbol. It's always stacked two symbols high to make it easier to get multiple wins on the same turn. In addition to that, they appear on all three of the middle reels (second, third and fourth), and it's especially valuable when you get more than one on the reels at once because they work together really well. On top of that, it always expands to cover the entire reel that it lands on.

Whenever you get at least one wild on the reels without any scatters (see below), then you'll trigger a free re-spin that has all of the reels spin with the wilds held in place. This is a cool way to make this feature particularly accessible while still providing more value than a regular spin thanks to the stacked wild being forced to land in the same position.

Free Spins Bonus Round

The Tiger Rush logo is a scattered bonus symbol that only appears on the first and last reels. They work together to give you a shot at a larger free spins bonus round. The way this is triggered is by getting both scatters on the reels at once, or you can get just one scatter with a wild symbol adjacent to it. If this happens, the middle three reels of the game expand to be five symbols each, and the game becomes a 25-payline title for the bonus feature.

We like how the bonus feature changes the format in order to give players more value instead of using more common methods like multipliers. What's really important to note is that the wilds still only appear on the second, third and fourth reels in this feature, but they will still expand to cover the entire vertical reel, which gives even more value during the 25-payline free spins mode.

Other Winning Combinations

There are two picture symbols that offer the largest wins. The picture with the bird gives you 15x for five of a kind, and you can get five of the flower picture symbol for a 10x win. Note that all payouts in this game are multiplied by your entire wager.

Glowing stones that look like decorative jelly beans make up the rest of the pay table. The yellow stone earns players 5x for five of a kind, and you can pick up a 2.5x win for five of the green. The red and blue stone symbols give players 1.8x and 1.6x for five of a kind, respectively, and you'll get paid 1.4x for five of a kind combinations of the purple.

In Summary

The Tiger Rush video slot centers completely around the expanding, stacked wild tiger symbols in a way that brings a style of play that centers around hitting features more often. We really like this element of the game, and we wish that more games did the same sort of thing because it helps to keep things fresh and exciting instead of making it seem like it takes forever between times that you trigger a feature.

Visually, this game is solid as well even though it's kept fairly simple. Thunderkick did an excellent job with the balance between aesthetics and gameplay here.