Dolphin Coast Slot

Moving away from their more widely used overly cartoonish models the Microgaming designers opted for a lightly rendered approach to the slot symbols for Dolphin Quest. Given the natural beauty and elegance of the subject matter it was definitely the right way to go.

As you would expect from an ocean themed slot the high value reel symbols are made up of sea horses, turtles, starfish, jellyfish and other recognisable deep sea marine life! While the low value symbols are the run of the mill card characters; 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace.
The titular dolphin is also the Wild symbol and dives deep to bring you some impressive wins if the tide is in your favour.

The choice of Scatter symbol was an interesting one, rather than an aggressive power fish like a shark or Orca Microgaming opted for a school of silver blue minnow. These little fish come to life and bully the word “Scatter” off the symbol when the feature is activated.

I was pleasantly surprised at the well rendered three dimensional dolphin that makes an appearance when you activate bonus features, given the more subdued aquatic elements this one really came to life on screen!

From a sound design perspective this game is showing its age. The reel sounds and ambient soundtrack are completely forgettable, it is standard Microgaming middle of the road fare which would be as much at home in an elevator as it is on this slot.

Bonus Features

Even with an impressive number of ways to win on Dolphin Coast Microgaming have added three lucrative bonus features to this slot. These features, when paired with 3125 ways to win, ensures that even one winning combination can result in several winning paylines being activated!

• Free Spins: landing 3 or more Scatter symbols on the reels will see you trigger the Free Spins feature. Free Spins can be retriggered during this mode meaning you can keep spinning on the house and taking advantage of all 3125 ways to win.

• Stacked Wilds: appearing on reels 2 and 4 these symbols come stacked which means there is the chance to fill the entire reel with winning paylines!

• Wild Dolphin Bonus: this is a randomly triggered bonus which sees a winning spin being rewarded with a Dolphin Coast logo on the center reel. This allows you to select one of three dolphins which will see up to a 5x multiplier being applied to the winning combination.

Microgaming have also included a Gamble Feature in Dolphin Coast, while this is not considered by many to be a “true” Bonus Feature it is great for getting your blood pumping and potentially giving your win balance a nice boost.

Jackpots

Dolphin Coast would be nothing more than an average 5x5 Reel slot was it not for the fact that it boasts an impressive 3125 ways to win!

Once again Microgaming have ensured that whether you play on a budget or have a fire in your belly to chase the highest payouts everyone can enjoy their slots. Dolphin Coast has affordable bet ranges by slot machines standards, with a minimum bet of €0.50 per spin up to €10.00 per spin for the big hitters! This is all possible as the coin sizes are a modest of €0.01-€0.02

Playing at max bet across all lines it is possible to take home a staggering 800,000 coin windfall – which even at a coin size of €0.02 still comes to an impressive jackpot tally of €16,000.00 on a single spin. A penny saved maybe a penny earned, but on Dolphin Coast 2 pennies staked could be a massive jackpot!
The real gem however has to be the possibility of winning the up to 7,500,000 coins during the Free Spins feature game. This requires you to trigger the free spins feature then go on to land the Wild Dolphin Bonus and other feature game during this mode! The end result is well over 15,000x your stake! This means a satisfying €150,000 jackpot win on a coin size of €0.02!

Closing Thoughts

Overall it feels like Microgaming missed the opportunity to upgrade Dolphin Coast, it looks, sounds and plays like what it is, an older Microgaming slot. A few minor tweaks could have made this really stellar. 

However the upside is that you get to play a high variance, high reward slot machine for very little risk. With such small coin sizes Dolphin Coast is a great option for players looking to chase big jackpots and win big coin drops while playing safely within their predetermined budget.