Brazilia Slots

Game Basics

The game features super stacks and split symbols, the latter being an innovation in slot game design. With split symbols, one symbol can count as two in determining if you win a prize.

Brazilia is a 5-reel, 3-row video slot game. It features active tiles that become animated when they pay a prize. If 9 or more of the same or similar character tiles line up, a mini-movie based on the tile's character plays briefly. On big wins the game rewards you with a spray of (virtual) coins and plays exciting music. However, the individual tiles are animated whenever they contribute to a prize.

This means that over a large number of plays (let's say 100,000 spins) about 94.9% of the money that players wager on the spins will be returned to them. The casino only keeps about 5.1%. Of course, individual game play can produce wildly different results, from you losing all your money in 1 spin to your winning a massive jackpot (or even several).

The game plays against a stunning backdrop portrait of the snow-capped Andes mountains. The reels spin down in-between Spanish or Portuguese-style columns. You get the feel of looking out at the mountains from a high courtyard in a church or villa.

Gameplay Features and Mechanics

Brazilia uses 30 pay lines. There are 2 special symbols, 4 high-value symbols, and 6 mid- to low-value symbols. The free spins bonus game uses an alternate set of reels that have equivalent symbols. The game's logo serves as the Wild symbol and it substitutes for all other symbols except the scatter symbol.

All prizes are awarded from left to right. You need at least 3 of a kind in adjacent tiles on a valid pay line to win a prize.

The scatter symbol depicts a waterfall. When 5 or more waterfalls appear the free spins bonus game is triggered. The number of spins you win depends on how many waterfalls appeared. The scatter symbols only appear on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5.

The special feature about Brazilia is that all the high-value tiles and the scatter symbol have split alternates. In other words, some tiles show two people or two waterfalls instead of only one. These count as two tiles on any pay line, which means you don't have to spin up 3 of the same symbol in order to win a prize. The split/stacked symbols can be a little confusing at first but once you become used to them you know you have probably won something if you see one (assuming it is part of a 2 consecutive-tile line up on a pay line).

The coolest thing about the split symbols is that you can theoretically roll up ten of a kind. Five double purple ladies pays 300X your bet (which would be $90,000 if you bet the maximum). The golden guy pays 250X your bet and the blue and green ladies pay 175X your if you spin up 10 of them.

The controls are simple and easy to use, as is characteristic of all High 5 Games slot machines. The controls are placed at the bottom of the screen and from left to right they control Pay lines and bet per line. You use up/down arrow buttons to scroll through the options on both.

• Pay Lines

  The Pay lines control allows you to choose from 1, 5, 9, 15, and 30 active Pay lines.

• Bet-Per-Line

  The Bet-per-line control allows you to choose from 0.01, 0.10, .25, 1.00, 2.00, 5.00, 10.00. Your wager-per spin can thus range from 0.01 all the way up to a heart-stopping 300.

• Replay Button

  If you get a big win you can hit the Replay button and watch your prize be awarded again. This is a neat way to catch details in the mini animations. Unfortunately, Replay doesn't work during the free spins bonus game.

• Auto Play Button

  The Auto Play button allows you to choose from 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 spins. You can stop the auto spins at any time.

• Spin/Stop Button

  The spin button acts as a stop button but the game's help screens say that stopping the spins does not change the outcome of a game. In other words, all you are interrupting is the animation. They are saying that whether you would have won anything has already been determined.

You can expect mini movie animations for the purple lady, the golden man, the blue and green ladies, the snake, the parrot, and the butterfly.

Triggering the Bonus Round

To win free spins you need at least five waterfalls. This will most likely happen when you get a couple of double waterfall tiles. At most you can only get 4 scatter symbols on a spin because they only appear on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5. Doing the math, you can get up to 8 waterfalls total assuming 4 double waterfalls appear for you.

You win 5, 7, 10, or 15 free spins depending on how many waterfalls triggered the bonus game. The game cannot be retriggered.

You can interrupt the animation during the free spins just as in the normal game but each spin's outcome has already been determined by the computer.

Although the free spins game uses a different set of reels, you still have the benefit of the superstacks and split symbols on the tiles.

Conclusion

The possibilities of the game are more interesting than the probabilities. The superstack feature is nice as long as the stacks line up. When you get 9 or more adjacent tiles the prizes are nice and the mini animations are cute. But the problem with superstacks is that you often see adjacent stacks on the right side of the screen and no connecting symbols on reel 2.

The double symbols make up for that inadequacy in some ways. At least if you get split symbols in a stack you only need 2 adjacent reels (1 and 2) in order to win prizes.

The soundtrack and graphics are fine but they are nothing to write home about. As video slot games go, Brazilia feels a little dated.

High-rollers will like the flexibility in betting but someone with a limited bank and experience will drop their jaw the first time they play a $300 bet on the machine. That's not a wager for the faint-hearted.

The free spins game is a standard free spin bonus. Even in 2013 this would have been considered tame compared to some other games' bonus rounds. For example, Immortal Romance came out in December 2011 and it featured progressive bonus rounds. Other games throw in multipliers on their bonus spins.

All that said, you'll find it's easy to spin up the excitement as well as to tone it down if you don't like the way things are going. The game is also full of fun surprises even if they are not animation extravaganzas. Sometimes the simpler game rules when you just want to spin the reels.