New iGame Review: Fortune Stacks, Kooza

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Konami Gaming’s Fortune Stacks is a five-reel game featuring colorful, Asian-themed art and the popular Action Stacked Symbols and a new multiplier feature. Scientific Games’ Kooza is the first-ever slot game to feature a Cirque du Soleil production and is reconfigured for easy mobile play.

Fortune Stacks
Konami Gaming

This colorful five-reel game features brilliant Asian-themed artistic elements with Konami’s popular Action Stacked Symbols and a new multiplier feature.

The base game is available in 30 lines with denominations ranging from .01 to .10. The primary game features a wild symbol on reels 2 through 5 that substitute for all other symbols except bonus triggers.

Three, four or five “Ingot” symbols trigger five, 15 or 30 free games, respectively. Two, three, four or five of the symbols on a free spin award an additional three, five, 15 or 30 free games.

The free games also include a special multiplier feature for Action Stacked Symbols, which are clusters of one symbol, usually covering a reel completely. At the start of every free spin in Fortune Stacks, Action Stacked Symbols on one or two reels will be upgraded with multipliers of 2X, 3X or 5X. The random multiplier will apply to all Action Stacked Symbols on that reel.

If two Action Stacked Symbols with a multiplier contribute to a line win, the multipliers are multiplied by each other. For instance, if a win is formed using a 3X and a 5X symbol, the line pay is multiplied by 15.

All wild symbols are stacked during the free games.

Developer: Konami Gaming, Inc.
Format: Five-reel, 30-line video slot
Denomination: .01, .05, .10
Max Bet: 150
Top Award: 7,500 times line bet
Hit Frequency: 31%
Payback: 88%-96%

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Kooza
Scientific Games

This Bally title is the first slot game ever to carry the theme of a famous Cirque du Soleil production, in this case the touring show Kooza, which premiered in 2007. Here, it is reconfigured for easy mobile play (at left), switching between a portrait-style screen and a horizontal landscape-style reel set according to the orientation of the mobile device.

Kooza, the slot game, recreates all the characters from the circus-themed road show, including “The Trickster,” who reprises the role of central character in the slot theme. Other characters including “The Innocent,” “The King,” the two court clowns and others are recreated as reel symbols in the base five-reel, 40-line video slot game.

There are several bonus events built around the theme, including mystery events in the primary game and a diverse package of bonus events including a wheel bonus, a pick bonus and a free-spin round.

Wild symbols and symbol stacks also play prominently in the game. Each reel contains stacked mystery symbol positions that are randomly replaced with one of several other symbols in stacks—that includes wild symbols.

Three scattered box symbols trigger a picking bonus in which the player selects one of three boxes to reveal a cash value or a spin of the Bonus Wheel. The wheel bonus can also be triggered with bonus symbols scattered on the three inner reels.

The wheel bonus awards a cash value, one of two free-game events or the Jackpot Feature to win one of four progressives, ranging from a “Mini” resetting at $20 to the “Trés Magnifique” jackpot, resetting at $1,000.

The two different free-game events are called Trickster Free Games and Wheel of Death Free Games. During Trickster Free Games, the Trickster may appear and upgrade symbols to a wild symbol or one of three high-paying symbols. Each reel contains stacked mystery symbol positions. Wheel of Death awards seven to 12 free games with a win multiplier of 2X to 4X.

Developer: Scientific Games
Format: Five-reel, 40-line video slot
Denomination: .01
Max Bet: 400
Top Award: Progressive; $1,000 reset
Hit Frequency: Approximately 50%
Payback: 96%

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