Go prospecting for a healthy haul of precious metal in Gold Rush, a mining-themed slot from Pragmatic Play. Not to be confused with the Playson slot of the same name, this one is played using a 5 reel, 25 payline game engine and comes with a feature that awards various free spins. Get digging from 25p to £250 per spin on all devices.
The design in Gold Rush is rather good – the setting is a mine shaft. Joining the gold-flecked playing cards are axes and spades, a lamp, a pit pony and a cart full of gold. The most rewarding symbol is the bearded miner – land 3, 4 or 5 of these in the same payline and you can look forward to an award equal to 1, 8 or 20 times your total stake. Helping to create those winning combinations are the sticks of dynamite which are the game’s wild – they doesn’t offer any specific payouts in their own right but they do replace all other symbols apart from the scatter.
That scatter appears on the middle 3 reels only – when you do land it on reels 2, 3 and 4 on the same spin, you’ll trigger the Free Spins feature. Here you can look forward to 10 free spins – an extra symbol, the golden nugget, is added to the reels during the free spins. Every time 1 of these lands, it’s collected in a meter above the reels. The more of these you collect, the more of the higher value miner symbols are brought into play. There are 4 levels in all:
- 0-4 nuggets = 7 extra miners
- 5-9 nuggets = 16 extra miners
- 10-14 nuggets = 21 extra miners
- 15+ nuggets = 29 extra miners
Every time a scatter lands during the feature, 2 more free spins are added to your total. If you advance a level on your final free spin, 1 extra free spin is awarded too.
Gold Rush is a pretty simple game but a volatile one. Expect lengthy spells when your prospecting will deliver little in the way of gold. Collect plenty of nuggets in the Free Spins feature though and the coins can quickly flow. The variance is in the medium to high range.
This is just what we’ve come to expect from a Pragmatic Play – impressive design, simple gameplay and a hard-hitting feature. Gold Rush ticks all of those boxes which combine to make this an enjoyable and potentially exciting game to play.
