Mining Fever slot review (Rabcat)

Mining Fever is a jolly title by Rabcat, a somewhat smaller slot game developer who regularly releases amusing slots that are easy on the eyes

These mining dwarfs assist you (with or without the help of various boosters) to mine for the big riches.

Now, you have to take that “big riches” with a grain of salt: Mining Fever is a low variance slot. You can win a maximum of 500 x the total bet, but winnings of more than 150 x the bet are already rare.

Graphically this video slot looks stunning: the Swiss-based Rabcat studio already has the reputation of making gorgeous slots, and this slot proves again how talented they are in this crucial domain of (3D) animations.

It shows they work for Disney and PS2/Xbox gaming studios!

Mining Fever gameplay and features

Mining Fever is a win all ways slot. There are 5 reels with 3 rows of symbols, which amounts to 243 ways to win.

Betting is done with a fixed amount per spin, which starts at 20 cents and runs up to $€ 40 per spin.

The theoretical payout rate is 96.14%. That’s not exceptionally high, but certainly on par.

Symbols and payouts

The wilds consist of a set of golden miners’ picks and replace all other symbols except for the scatters (the miner dwarfs). Five wilds award you a payout of 25 x the total bet.

The high paying symbols consist of a golden crown and a treasure chest. With a 5-of-a-kind, these yield 25 x and 12.50 x the bet, respectively.

If you spin five gold inlaid rings, pentagonal gold coins, or chunks of gold ore (medium symbols), you win between 1.5 x and 5 x the bet.

Finally, we come to the low symbols, the J, Q, K and A. These serve mainly as a visual filler on the reels: they hardly yield anything (between 0.4 x and 1.25 x the total bet tops).

Three different boosters

As soon as you spin two similar miners, you’ll have earned a booster and a free extra spin.

Driler’s Dwarven Drill Feature: the green dwarf miners awards you a stacked wild on reels 1, 2 or 3.

Bombur’s Dwarven Bomb: the red miners yield two spins with extra wilds: a sticky wild in the first spin and 3 or 4 extra wilds in the second spin.

Thundar’s Dwarven Hammer: the blue dwarfs deliver a big blow to the reels, which turns the first two reels into the same symbol.

Free spins bonus

If you manage to spin 3 different little miner dudes, you land the hilarious Dwarven Gold Train Bonus: 8 free spins.

The three dwarfs (very much like in the Hobbit trilogy) now reside in their mining cart and lead a trail (of wilds!) that moves across the reels.

Each spin moves the trail with wilds one step to the right and/or vertically. If the train leaves the screen on the right, it reappears on the other side.

It is a delight to see that front car with the 3 miner dudes storming across the playing field and yelling and screaming of joy and fear. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the screen, the dragon Smog (brother of Smaug) is looming around, trying to devour this yummy dwarf snack. Will he succeed? You will have to find out yourself. How is that for a cliffhanger!?

Our verdict on the Mining Fever slot?

Mining Fever is a very nice treat, especially suitable for novice slot players.

The risk is low, the bonus features drop quite often, and the visuals are all quite amusing and entertaining.

Also beneficial for the newbie slot player, Rabcat does an excellent job in visually demonstrating what the symbols and bonus features entail. So, you will get the hang of it in no time.

Whether we will still be playing Mining Fever a few years down the road, we doubt it. If you’ve seen all the bonus features a few times, we start to long for new, higher variance slots.

Possibly Rabcat can start thinking of a higher variance Mining Fever 2.0, where Smog is in play and becomes a fire-spitting ferocious dragon? Yikes!

3.6 out of 5 stars.

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