Microgaming has launched its new video slot on August 8. The title is Exotic Cats. It may or may not have been intentional, but August 8 is International Cat Day. The occasion is more for domestic felines and the video slot features the wild ones, but that should not make any difference. Exotic Cats is alive across all three Microgaming platforms –download, instant play and mobile. You can play it at online casinos like All Slots, 32Red and River Belle.

Exotic Cats is 5x3 structure slot machine with 243 ways to win. The reels are set in the depth of a dense jungle with the usual raucous forest sounds in the background audio. The exotic cats are the most majestic of the species and include the lion, tiger, panther, leopard and cougar. Each symbol stars paying from two-of-a-kind combination and awards the same high payouts, which is something new and will tend to reduce the variance even further. The cats can appear stacked on the reels. Each cat has marked out its own area of the jungle, which is one of the five reels, and guards it ferociously. Microgaming says, “The primal power of the ferocious felines gets unleashed through vertical wilds.” The feature can be activated if an exotic cat symbol lands on the reel that is its own terrain. Specifically, it is triggered when the lion lands on the first reel, the tiger lands on the second reel, the panther lands on the third reel, the leopard lands on the fourth reel and the cougar lands on the fifth reel. Then the corresponding big cat will spring to life and turn the entire reel wild. You can get more than one wild reel in the same spin. You can even get five wild reels.

The game logo is the regular wild symbol and it also awards the highest line payouts. There are two other thematic symbols. One of them is a pretty jungle girl, looking quite catty herself. The other is a paw mark of one of the big cats. For the low paying symbols Microgaming now uses the playing card suit icons more often. In Exotic Cats these have been crafted beautifully. The other symbol of importance is the gold coin scatter symbol. Four or five of them award payouts multiplied by the total bet. Three or more trigger 10 free spins. 5 additional free spins are awarded in the retrigger. The free spins are played on a different reel set.