Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take some time off and relax on a private island somewhere in the Caribbean? That’s not really a realistic option for most of us, but we can head on over to a Realtime Gaming casino and play Crystal Waters, an island-themed slot machine that’s part of the Real Series. This game combines a relaxing theme with some big payouts and a progressive jackpot to make for a slot machine that may not be spectacular, but is definitely fun to play and offers players plenty of chances to win big.
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Basic Gameplay in Crystal Waters
Crystal Waters is a 20-line, five-reel slot machine that’s part of RTG’s Real Series slot games. Players have the option of making bets of up to $5 per line, or $100 per spin if you play all 20 lines. It’s worth noting that RTG classifies Crystal Waters as a Very High volatility slot machine; this means you can expect a lot of streaks (both good and bad), with the potential to suddenly find yourself having won a huge amount of money if things break just right for you.
In Crystal Waters, you’ll be trying to match ocean-themed symbols from left to right across your active paylines. As with all of the Real Series games, the most common (and least valuable) symbols are the “poker rank” symbols, ranging from nines and tens up through aces and kings. You’ll need to hit three of any of these symbols to score a win.
For higher value symbols, you’ll only need to hit two or more in order to score wins. These symbols are based on the kinds of things you might find near the shore on an island: seahorses, tropical fish, and the most valuable symbol of all: the sea turtle.
In addition, you’ll find two different special symbols on the reels. The first is everyone’s favorite sea creature, the dolphin. The dolphin is a wild substitute symbol that can appear on reels two and four, and doubles the prize of any combination they take part in. It’s also interesting to note that these dolphin symbols are “stacked” wilds; you’ll find them coming in groups on the second and fourth reels, so it’s possible to fill up the entire reel with wild dolphins, potentially scoring you multiple large wins!
The other important symbol is the yacht, which acts as the scatter symbol for Crystal Waters. Hit three or more of these symbols anywhere on the reels, and you’ll win a prize based on the total size of your wager for that spin.
Special Features in Crystal Waters
The yacht symbol is also the trigger for Crystal Waters’ only bonus game, the Free Games Feature. If you hit three or more yachts on a single spin, you’ll also win 15 free spins. During these free spins, you’ll find that a special Bonus Fish icon has been added on the third reel. This symbol not only acts as a wild symbol, but it can also multiply your winnings by a factor of 2x, 4x or 8x. In addition, these multipliers are cumulative with any wild dolphins you might hit; overall, the game can sometimes award you as much as 16x the normal win on a given spin! Best of all, this feature can be retriggered during the bonus round.
Top Payouts on Crystal Waters
There are three different large payouts we’d like to mention in Crystal Waters. Hitting five sea turtles is worth 2,000 credits, but add a dolphin into that combination, and you’ll win a full 4,000 credits – up to $20,000 if you’re playing for $5 per line. Another huge prize comes from hitting five yacht symbols; this will earn you 200 times your total bet on that spin. At a maximum bet of $100, you’ll once again win $20,000.
There’s also a random progressive jackpot that can be awarded after any spin you make, regardless of what happened during that spin. This jackpot can vary in size depending on where you play, as this is a local jackpot (as opposed to a networked prize that all RTG casinos contribute to). The machine we played on for this review, as an example, had a prize of over $6,200 available. To learn more about progressive jackpots click here.
Crystal Waters Presentation
It may seem like a broken record to say this when talking about RTG slots, but presentation isn’t really the top priority in most of these games, especially when it comes to the Real Series slots. The Real Series machines are all very similar in their basic formatting; in fact, you might think off all of these games as skins over the same basic shell.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that these games are ugly or aren’t fun to play. It’s just that there’s only so much that can be done with these machines, so you won’t find fancy animations or anything like that here. In the case of Crystal Waters, you do have some nice beach scenery, and as usual, the art uses plenty of bright colors and a friendly, light style. It’s certainly easy to play the game and nothing about the presentation is confusing, which is the most important thing. If you’re looking for as many frills as possible, you won’t find anything like that here; at the same time, Crystal Waters certainly isn’t an ugly looking slot, and the presentation gets the job done.
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