Great Game Serengeti

Great Game Serengeti Review

Great Game Serengeti follows closely in the footsteps of the original Great Game Rockies from Hacksaw, but this time the mysterious hunter character takes you on a trip to the scorching African savannah. The cartoonish visual style hasn’t changed, although the animals you’re hunting certainly have, and the core features have been carried over as well. That being said, this is not a pure reskin release, as Hacksaw has wisely included a brand new feature that intensifies the big game hunting action.

Before we get to all the good stuff, however, we need to cover the basics of this game. Great Game Serengeti plays out on a 5x3 grid with 9 paylines (down from 17 in the first game), and you win by landing matching symbols across these paylines starting from the leftmost reel. The lion is the highest value pay symbol, followed by a rhino, zebra, giraffe, and ostrich. These premium symbols pay 3x to 25x your stake for 5 of a kind, and the lower-value royal symbols all pay 1x your stake for the same. The caterpillar Wild symbol substitutes for any pay symbol and pays 25x your stake for 5 on a payline.

Great Game Serengeti Reels Screen

Hunting Season symbols trigger the hunter character to shoot at targets above the 5 reels, and each hit turns animal symbols on the reel below into coin prizes of up to 500x or trap collector symbols. Wild symbols on the affected reels are upgraded with multipliers of up to x20, and these boost up to 5 random coin prizes per wild. The new Stampede Reveal feature triggers randomly, removing all royal symbols from the spin and guaranteeing that a Hunting Season symbol will land. This increases the number of animal symbols drastically.

Hunting Season symbols have a higher hit rate in the Khaki Quest bonus round, while Roaring Reign introduces a Lion Meter that guarantees the Stampede Reveal feature when filled. The Zebrawl Hidden Epic bonus round guarantees a Hunting Season symbol on each free spin, which fills up the Lion Meter faster. This “hidden epic” bonus is not available in the bonus buy menu, so it must be triggered organically. Great Game Serengeti is a medium volatility slot game, scoring 3 out of 5 on Hacksaw’s scale, and it features an RTP of 96.29%, a bet range of £0.10 to £200, a hit rate of 36.78%, and a max win of 5,000x your stake.

Great Game Serengeti Features

We have given you a compact overview of the feature department already, but below you get the full, detailed tour. We also recommend that you sample the features for yourself by testing the Great Game Serengeti free play demo located at the top of this page. Head up there after finishing the review. Let’s jump in!

Hunting Season

When you land a Hunting Season symbol, it triggers a Hunt after any regular wins have been paid. The hunter on the left fires his rifle 5 times, aiming at targets sitting above each of the reels. Each shot, starting from the leftmost reel, either hits the target or misses. Any animal symbols on a reel where the hunter hits the target are transformed into Coin or Trap symbols. How many Stars each animal symbol displays determines its Coin value, and the range is 1 to 4 Stars.

Animals with 1, 2, or 3 Stars turn into, at minimum, Bronze, Silver, or Gold Coins, respectively, while animals with 4 Stars turn into Traps. Traps reveal a value equal to Gold Coins while also collecting the value from all present Coin symbols. This does not remove the value from the Coin symbols. Bronze Coins reveal values of 0.2x to 1x, Silver Coins reveal values of 2x to 5x, and Gold Coins reveal values of 10x to 50x.

While not guaranteed, animals can turn into Diamond Coins too, and these have values ranging from 100x to 500x your stake. If a target is hit above a reel with a Wild symbol, the Wild gets upgraded with a multiplier ranging from x2 to x20. Each multiplier Wild present boosts 1 to 5 randomly selected Coin symbols before all values are summed up and paid.

Stampede Reveal

The Stampede Reveal feature can trigger randomly during any spin, and this happens before the reels stop. The feature is prominently announced, so you cannot miss it when it happens. When triggered, the Stampede Reveal guarantees a Hunting Season symbol and only animal symbols landing, as all royal symbols are removed from the reel strips for that spin. This makes the Hunting Season feature more valuable, as each reel is filled with animal symbols.

Khaki Quest Bonus Round

The Khaki Quest Bonus Round triggers when you land 3 scatters on the same base game spin, awarding 8 free spins. This bonus round plays out similarly to the base game, but the Hunting Season symbols land more frequently. In both the Khaki Quest and Roaring Reign bonus rounds, you win +2 or +4 additional free spins from landing 2 or 3 scatters in view on the same free spin, respectively.

Roaring Reign Bonus Round

The Roaring Reign Bonus Round triggers from landing 4 scatters on the same base game spin, awarding 10 free spins. It plays out similarly to the Khaki Quest Bonus, but with a Lion Meter bolted on to the right side of the grid. Unlike in the base game and Khaki Quest Bonus, the Stampede Reveal feature does not trigger randomly during this bonus round.

Great Game Serengeti Free Spins Win Screen

Instead, it triggers when you fill the Lion Meter. The Lion Meter has 10 steps, and one step is filled for each royal symbol present on a reel that’s hit during a Hunting Season feature. The Stampede Reveal feature triggers on the spin that follows the meter being filled. The Lion Meter is then reset. However, if you progressed past the 10-step threshold when triggering the Stampede Reveal feature, that progression is added to the meter as it resets.

Zebrawl Hidden Epic Bonus Round

Landing 5 scatter symbols on the same base game spin triggers the Zebrawl Hidden Epic Bonus Round, awarding 10 free spins. This bonus round plays out similarly to the Roaring Reign Bonus, but with the added benefit of being guaranteed a Hunting Season symbol on each free spin. This means the Lion Meter fills up quicker since you trigger the Hunting Season feature on each spin, increasing the hit rate of the Stampede Reveal feature.

Bonus Buy (not UK)

Players in eligible regions will find the Bonus Buy menu via the yellow button down to the left, clearly marked with ‘Buy Bonus.’ It comes with the following options in the Great Game Serengeti slot:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins - pay 2x your stake to increase your bonus round chances by 3 times.
• Hunting Season FeatureSpins - pay 50x your stake to be guaranteed a Hunting Season symbol on the spin that follows.
• Big Five FeatureSpins - pay 100x your stake to be guaranteed the Stampede Reveal feature.
• Khaki Quest Bonus Round - pay 60x your stake to trigger this feature.
• Roaring Reign Bonus Round - pay 200x your stake to trigger this feature.

Theme & Graphics

Great Game Serengeti is a hunting-themed slot game that takes you to the vast, sun-baked African plains. Set against a backdrop bathed in deep oranges, reds, and silhouetted acacia trees, the scene captures the serene atmosphere of a sunset savannah. A hunter in classic safari gear leans nonchalantly against a tree while casually resting a scoped rifle against his shoulder and knee, waiting patiently for his moment. The overall visual style is cartoonish, similar to the predecessor release, and the energetic soundtrack is dominated by pan flutes and tribal drums.

Great Game Serengeti Free Play

As always, we recommend that you not only read about how this game works but also try the free Great Game Serengeti demo for yourself. You’ll find it at the top of this page, and you can head up there after you’ve finished reading our verdict below. We would, of course, love to hear from you too. So feel free to tell us what you think of this game in the comments field after your Great Game Serengeti free play session is over. If you then want to take the game to the real money level, casinos carrying this title are located directly below the demo game.

Pros and Cons of Great Game Serengeti

Our Verdict

What’s happening to Hacksaw Gaming these days reminds me of what happened to Thunderkick a few years back. Suddenly, the previously edgy provider started releasing sanitized, bright-color slots clearly aimed at casual gamers. This is what happens when a studio “grows up” and wants to conquer new markets, a larger market share, or both. We do hope and believe Hacksaw will continue their gritty, dark-side path in parallel to this new approach. However, we also expect more releases like Great Game Serengeti, which sees Hacksaw stretching their legs in safer and more mainstream territory.

The “old” Hacksaw is the studio most of us fell in love with, after all, and it would be unwise of them to completely abandon their roots. For a long time, we were spoiled with hardly any clones from this provider, and Great Game Serengeti barely escapes the reskin stamp thanks to the added Stampede Reveal feature. The original Great Game Rockies has not seen much success since its release earlier this year, and we doubt the added feature is enough to convince fence-sitters. You never know, of course, but it seems a bit strange and unlike Hacksaw to try again like this.

Where the old, uncompromising Hacksaw would have allowed the hunter to shoot the animals directly, he’s instead aiming at targets above the grid in both the first release and in Great Game Serengeti. This neuters the hunter's rough edge, serving as a metaphor for Hacksaw’s entire new approach. It boils down to a coin collection feature with possible multiplier upgrades, and unlike what used to be a Hacksaw hallmark, it seldom delivers anything too pulse-raising in the base game. Overall, the feature feels tame instead of potently explosive.

The new Stampede Reveal feature does up the ante a bit, though, making Great Game Serengeti my preference if I had to choose between the two. It’s more fun when the reels are filled with animals to convert to coins and traps. However, you don’t see that happen all that often, and you still need the hunter to hit targets. The bonus rounds offer progressively more hunting action, but I see no reason why Hacksaw should not offer the “hidden epic” bonus in the bonus buy menu. All in all, Great Game Serengeti is a decent follow-up to a mediocre original, signaling a new era for this provider that many fans of the old Hacksaw might not like too much.