Pandemic Rising

Pandemic Rising Review

From our personal standpoint, this virus-based slot by Pragmatic Play is an effort to borrow ideas from Nolimit City. Of course, we might be wrong – but the similarities are hard to miss. We’ll circle back to this once we get to the game’s design. For now, let’s focus on the key facts about the Pandemic Rising slot.

So, this game is played on a 5×4 grid with 40 paylines. What we like about the slot is its enormous potential win of up to 14,000 times your wager. Yep, we realize that Pandemic Rising has high volatility, but it is balanced with a 95.51% RTP rate. As a result, you’ve got a 1 in 77,519,380 chance to hit the max win, and Free Spins land about once in every 400 spins.

Pandemic Rising Slot - Reels Screen

Before starting real-money playing, you can try out the free demo version of Pandemic Rising on our website. After 20 or 50 sessions (or as many as you need), you may spend some cash on the real-money version. The minimum stake size is $0.20 and the maximum one is $240 per round.

The Pandemic Rising slot features 11 paying symbols, including thematic ones such as scientists, saviors battling the virus, monkeys, and others. Plus, we found traditional 10-A card icons. You can grab from 2.5x to 20x of your bet in the case of a winning combination. What’s more, the slot includes Wilds and bonus symbols.

Pandemic Rising Slot Features

It’s not exactly surprising that Pandemic Rising doesn’t feature the kind of groundbreaking mechanics Nolimit City is known for. Still, you’ll find here multiplier Wilds, free spins, and bonus buy options. Let’s talk a bit in detail about these functions.

Multiplier Wilds

The main task of the Wild symbol is to substitute for other icons of the grid (except for Virus and bonus symbols). The things that we appreciate the most are random multipliers that can be presented on Wilds. If the Wilds with multipliers are a part of a winning combination, your payout will grow. The available multipliers are x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8, x9, x10. If you are a lucky one who catches a few wild symbols of the same winning combo in Pandemic Rising, their multipliers add to each other.

Free Spins

It all begins in true classic fashion. Land the bonus Scatter on the far right, far left, and middle reels, and what do you get? Right – 8 free spins plus a 2x payout if 3 Scatters appear during the bonus round.

While this feature is active, every Wild that lands will stick to the reels until the end of the round. On top of that, there’s a global multiplier applied to all wins in Pandemic Rising. It starts at x1 and can climb all the way up to x100 on a separate progress meter, triggered whenever Virus symbols show up.

By the way, let’s talk about the Virus symbol. You’ll only see these icons pop up during Free Spins, and every time they land, they get collected. That’s when the meter outside the reels kicks into action, tracking your multiplier climb. Starting from x1, it can shoot all the way up to a blazing x100! Every three collected symbols bump the multiplier to the next level and award you +1 extra Free Spin.

Pandemic Rising Slot - Free Spins

Ante Bet

If you activate the Ante Bet, your chances of triggering Free Spins jump up to 10 times compared to the Pandemic Rising base game. The cost of using Ante Bet is 80x.

Bonus Buys

Here we have two options. The first one is an opportunity to purchase Free Spins, which costs 100 times your wager. The second bonus buy function is Super Free Spins. The second one is the Super Free Spins feature – similar to the first, but with one Wild symbol carrying a multiplier randomly added to the grid on every spin. The price is 500x.

Theme & Graphics

As we mentioned, Pandemic Rising strongly resembles Nolimit City’s work, especially in terms of design. Sure, the game menu here is still classic Pragmatic, but the background, featuring police and burning buildings, looks way more modern.

The symbols are also quite stylish and ironic, especially when they shift their mood from cheerful to gloomy. We also enjoyed the bacterial explosion that occurs right before the Free Spins round begins. The music is spot on too, perfectly conveying the chaos of a pandemic.

Pros And Cons Of Pandemic Rising Slot

Our Verdict

Summing up, in our opinion, COVID-19 is not a topic that will be a big hit among gamblers. However, Pandemic Rising might actually work the other way around – turning into something unusual that grabs the audience’s attention. Ultimately, we can only judge based on our own impressions.

The slot has savage winning potential, as it offers up to 14,000x the bet, and it has really impressed us. Plus, free spins and Wild multipliers add more adrenaline to the Pandemic Rising game. We understand that the volatility is high, but you may always buy extra functions to increase your winning likelihood. The design and visuals are definitely eye-catching, so we’ll give the provider credit for that. However, overall, the game doesn’t really deserve more than a 7 out of 10.