Titan Storm Slot Game
"Tremble before the power of the Titans! Immortal warriors – guardians of untold celestial riches. Do you have the courage to join the Titans? Win the cash of the Titans! May the Titan's favour be upon you! Stand firm in the face of the Storm! This is more than mere legend! Magic and Might...are a Titan's delight! When the heavens open, skies will fall, riches rain, in the Titan's storm."
Aficionados of action/adventure animation television shows immediately recognize the motifs in Nextgen Gaming's slot machine game, Titan Storm. Everyone else mistakes the game for a weird blend of Greek mythology and space fantasy. In reality, the game is a brilliant tribute to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe with a nod to Transformers.
Nextgen released Titan Storm in 2014. The game features crisp graphics, some in-tile animation, a powerful soundtrack, and a lot of ways to win. The game has a theoretical return to player of 95.453%, which when compared to other slots games is very good.
The background illustration is a work of art, lovingly paying homage to games like Starcraft, movies like "Avatar", and all those cool action animation shows people love to watch but seldom talk about. With a blue-tinted Saturn hanging in the distant sky over clouds where floating mountains dance on the edge of a vast storm, and blue crystals and half-hidden sources of shining power, you not only know you're not in Kansas anymore you also know to expect the unexpected ahead.
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Symbols & Payouts
Titan Storm is a 5-reel, 3-row video slot game with 243 pay lines. The "243 ways" design just means that every possible combination of a 1 tile from each of the 5 reels pays a prize. All prizes are paid from left to right and only the highest possible prize per pay line is awarded. There are three special symbols in the game.
- The Wild symbol is the Titan. He only appears on reels 2, 3, and 4. This symbol substitutes for all other symbols in the game except the Scatter. When one of his tiles contributes to a winning combination he draws his sword.
- The Scatter symbol is a picture of the massive gate to the Titan's palace. The Scatter symbol only appears on reels 2, 3, and 4. Three Scatter symbols pay 50 times the total bet.
- When a combination of 3 Wild and Scatter symbols appear on the screen the Free Spins bonus game is triggered. The Wild and Scatter then merge to become a Scatter/Wild symbol.
After the three special symbols the game's highest value symbols are the Titan Queen and the Exploding World. Both symbols pay 10 times your coin value (bet per line) for 2-of-a-kind. Here's some more details on the payouts for higher value symbols in the game.
- The Titan Queen
Pays 50 times bet per line, 200 times bet per line, and 2000 times bet per line for 3 symbols, 4 symbols, and 5 symbols respectively.
- The Exploding World
Pays 50 times bet per line, 100 times bet per line, and 1000 times bet per line for 3 symbols, 4 symbols, and 5 symbols respectively.
- The Titan's Warbeast
An homage to He-Man's Battlecat, pays 25 times bet per line, 50 times bet per line, and 500 times bet per line for 3 symbols, 4 symbols, and 5 symbols respectively.
- The Golden Emblem
An homage to Transformers, pays 25 times bet per line, 50 times bet per line, and 200 times bet per line for 3 symbols, 4 symbols, and 5 symbols respectively.
- The Titan's Sword
Resembling both Optimus Prime and He-Man's swords, pays the same prizes as the Golden Emblem.
The remaining low-value symbols are the traditional "A", "K", "Q", "J", "10", and "9" symbols drawn from playing card decks. They all top out at 100 times bet per line for 5 symbols with minor variations ranging from 10 to 20 times per line for 3 symbols and from 25 to 40 times bet per line for 4 symbols.
Game Controls
The game controls are very simple, as Nextgen Gaming has made a point of streamlining game play through the years.
There are two informational widgets placed above the screen with the 5 reels. The Total Bet display on the left is the product of multiplying the Bet Per Line by 243 (all possible combinations on a 5-reel, 3-row screen). The Balance display on the left reports how much money you have remaining for game play.
As with other 243 pay line games, you cannot alter the number of active pay lines.
Just below the screen area with the reels is a status line that reports each win per pay line after your spins complete. If you don't win a prize on a given spin the bar just scrolls through tips and promotional text for the game.
There is a highly stylized control panel below the screen area. The panel's design matches the fantasy-futuristic style of the Titans' clothing and weapons.
The leftmost controls are the Information button and, just below it, the Sound control. Click on the Information budget and you are taken into the help system, which allows you to scroll horizontally through three screens. Click on the Sound button and you toggle the game's sounds on and off. The help system has its own dramatic theme song featuring horns played against a backdrop of percussion.
The next control is the Bet Per Line widget. There are 3 buttons on the top part of the widget: one to set Max Bet (looks like 3 gold coins in a stack) and two to help you scroll up or down through available coin values. The display bar below the buttons tells you what the current coin value for bet per line is set to.
You can use the left and right arrows on your computer keyboard to change the coin value.
The main widget on the control panel is the WIN window, which shows you the total amount of the prizes you won on your last completed spin.
To the right of the WIN window is the ever cool Gamble button that Nextgen Gaming includes in all its slots games. This button features a stylized golden Heart and Club emblem, and launches the gamble feature.
The Gamble feature is standard on all Nextgen Gaming slots. After any spin where you win a prize the Gamble button becomes active. If you click on it you can use your prize money to make another bet. A playing card is turned face down in the middle of the Gamble screen. You can guess whether it's Red or Black (doubling your money if you are right) or which suit the card is from (quadrupling your money if you are right).
You lose your money if you are wrong. You can keep playing until the game reaches its limit or you lose your money.
Click on Take Win to exit the Gamble game.
The window has a Card History bar that shows you what the last five cards turned up were. To be honest, this is determined by a random number generator. You have just as much chance to win by making the same choice every time as by changing your selection.
The Autoplay button brings up the slider control that allows you to choose from 0 to 100 automated spins. The amount of your wager is deducted from your balance at the beginning of each spin. The game stops if you interrupt the auto spins, if you win a bonus game, when the last scheduled spin has been played, or if your balance drops below the wager amount.
The Spin button is a bright green arrow. The arrow becomes a bright red square after the reels begin spinning so that you can stop the animations.
Triggering the Bonus Round
The Titan's Storm bonus is triggered by the appearance of three Wild or three Scatter or a combination of both. The game darkens the screen and plays an ominous, dramatic riff when it looks like you might win a bonus round.
When you do win the Free Spins game the transition is pretty cool. The background image becomes tinted in a reddish-orange glow. A stone wall covers the reels and then bursts. The Titan appears in the middle of the screen, raises his sword, and thrusts it into the ground with thunder and lightning.
A new stone wall drops into place and transforms into a new reels screen. The three triggering tiles are replaced by golden doors and King Titan burst through them to complete the transformation to the combine Scatter/Wild symbols.
The hybrid Scatter/Wild symbol can retrigger the game. You'll see meteors come flashing out of the reddish skies when this happens.
All 5 of a kind wins are multiplied by 5, so even if you only get five "9" tiles your prize is 500 times your bet per line.
Conclusion
This is a pretty cool game. It has a lot of little surprises packed into it. For example, every now and then the blue crystals in the background illustration begin glowing to hint that you may be about to get a big prize. If you get a Big Win the game rains diamonds at you instead of the usual coins.
The music and the ambient sounds are befitting of an action show. The Free Spins bonus game has a much more intense song than the regular game. There is actually a background song that plays continuously if you don't spin the reels for a while. It is almost like the blue crystals are singing to you.
All the little riffs used throughout the game sound like transition riffs used in the old animation shows, such as when you return from a commercial break or some character pulls out a favored weapon or changes into a more powerful form.
The battle music is a little campy but it's a fun way to remind you that, yes, you also watched all those cartoons when they were popular.
The animations are very well done. Most of the promotional artwork you can find on the Web really does not do the game much justice. Even the low value symbols have a glistening, chiseled look to them that translates well during the prize pulsations. A symbol pulsates or temporarily grows larger when it contributes to a winning combination.
This is a "must play" slot game for anyone who likes fantasy, space opera, animation, etc. But it also brings plenty to the table for people who just want to win prizes.