Pacific Gold Slot Review

Elk Studios is a provider that we have not paid too much attention to in the past. We have only reviewed two of their games so far, from close to seventy spinners this company has produced. Those familiar with this Swedish game provider know that they made their bones with their Wild Toro slot, yet, their bread and butter is their Gold series. Its latest installment appeared at gambling sites on February 16, 2022. After hanging around the one thousand rankings for a couple of weeks or so, it came close to breaking through to the industry’s one hundred most-played titles. Naturally, we expected this, as the franchise has its fans, and we are slightly disappointed in ourselves that we have only analyzed one game in this series, Tahiti Gold. Thus, it is now time to give a second entry into this established franchise some BTCGOSU love.

Theme & Design

Without question, Rich Wilde is interactive gaming’s most famous adventurer. However, Elk’s Kane gives him a run for his money. He is a more rugged, weary traveler that has been through his fair share of explorations throughout different corners of the globe looking for various treasures. Kane debuted in 2019 with Ecuador Gold, when he traversed the South American rainforest, and the Pacific marks his sixth journey.

The visuals here are in line with some of the other Gold games. They are colorful illustrations with a somewhat modern comic book feel. The setting here is an undisclosed island in the Pacific. While the plot of this slot revolves around a cargo airplane, flight KS-17, flying from San Diego to Osaka that never made its final destination. Kane has gone to see if he can locate the mysteriously vanished airplane and retrieve its precious cargo.

You can see the plane stuck in a rockface structure in the background, as the symbols drop in the foreground between two of its wings, which get flanked by large rocks. Pacific Gold uses the same quirky system where the game zooms in and out of its setting depending on its gameplay mode.

You will find the spin button in the lower right corner of your screen and the auto-spin function in the top right one. The bet-adjuster is in the lower left, and the icon leads to the settings panel in the top right corner of your screen. The bonus bet option is between these.

We should note that the sound bites Pacific Gold use give it a sense of story, which is rarely the case with most other reel-spinners.

Specs & Gameplay

Pacific Gold is a six-reel, four-row slot whose game grid expands by four extra rows via Avalanche wins. Experienced spinners are well aware of avalanche/cascading mechanics, where symbols that are a part of winning combos explode, leaving space for new ones to fall in their place. The variance here is high, and the hit frequency is 25. The RTP of Pacific Gold is below average at 95%, yet the win potential of this game is x10,000, which is pretty decent, considering that the max bet size is $100. The lowest wager you can make on this game is $0.2. It utilizes up to 262,144 ways to win. All symbol combinations start forming from the leftmost reel, and only combos of three or more matching symbols payout prizes, only paying out the highest wins per active payline.

The pay symbols here get divided into three categories. The lowest-paying ones are A-J royals, producing prizes of x0.3 your bet for six-of-a-kind. The medium-paying ones are different color symbols responsible for x0.8 or x1 prizes for six matching tokens appearing on the grid at once. Three tribal masks plus Kane are the high-paying symbols of this game, responsible for rewards of x2 to x5 for six-of-a-kind.

A gold Maltese cross is the Wild here, replacing all other pay tokens to form wins. The mysteriously vanished airplane is the Scatter in this slot. A shiny embossed skull is the Ghost Box symbol, while regular pay ones with gold borders form power stacks. Also, 2×2, 3×3, and 4×4 tokens may drop on avalanches in this game.

Bonus Features

We briefly explained the avalanche/cascading feature pioneered by Gonzo’s Quest above. Still, we will run through it again. When a prize combo forms, the winning symbols of this combination explode, and new ones drop in their place, providing a chance for novel wins to form. However, an avalanche here can add a row to the game grid, increasing the number of rows up to eight and boosting the ways to win up to 262,144.

Both Wild and standard pay symbols can show up on the game grid in their regular sizes. Or as oversized symbols up to 4×4. Spaces below these mega tokens get filled by 1×1 symbols.

Power Stack symbols, the ones with the golden frames, come onto the grid in single sizes and represent stacks of four 1×1 tokens. A stack’s symbol count grows by two with each cascade, and when they form wins, their counts get utilized to calculate the payout.

Horizontal stacks of matching pay symbols  1×2 to 1×4 in size can show up on the grid, and they will remain on it if they are not a part of a win in an avalanche. Or if they do not get pushed down by the oversized game symbols.

A Ghost Box, the skull token, collects all the symbols that are a part of a win, breaking down oversized ones into 1×1 tokens. When an avalanche produces no winning combo, the Ghost Box shoots all of its collected symbols into a new avalanche.

Hitting three to six bonus symbols triggers the Pacific Gold Free Spins Drops. The complimentary reel rotations in this mode are ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five. These correspond with the number of bonus symbols landed, three, four, five, and six. The Free Spins round here incorporates a Safety Level. It increases the row by x1 following a win sequence, growing to a maximum of eight rows.

The X-iter feature offers you the choice to buy various in-game modes. For instance, for a price of x25, the game will guarantee a Ghost Box landing. For a cost of x500, it will trigger the Free Spins round.

GOSU Verdict

We gave Tahiti Gold a BTCGOSU recommendation, and we will do the same with Pacific Gold. It may not be as visually engaging as some of the other titles in this franchise, but it is pleasing enough. Plus, it has a wealth of gameplay mechanisms that keep things super interesting. The extended win sequences should keep you glued to your screen, and the varied pay symbols in play coupled with the avalanche drops create a reel-spinning experience you will not want to stop. Maybe we went a little overboard with the praise. Nevertheless, we definitely give Pacific Gold our seal of approval. We were quite fond of its gameplay.

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