Jade Idol Slots

Overview

This slot features 5 reels and 9 pay lines, which is different from the typical CryptoLogic / Amaya setup of 5 reels and 20 to 30 pay lines.

You can bet between $0.01 and $10.00 per pay line, making the minimum bet one cent per spin and the maximum wager $90.00. This game also offers a bet max button that allows you to quickly turn betting options up to their highest point.

Unfortunately, Jade Idol doesn't have an auto spin button, which is a problem if you like automatically spinning the reels to get the bonus round or hit a big payout. You also won't find an option to stop the reels, which we think is an even bigger problem.

The reason why is because, like many Amaya slots, Jade Idol's reels take a while to stop spinning. And it gets boring waiting 4 to 5 seconds to see your result.

The theme of Jade Idol seems to revolve around a wealthy Asian princess or starlet, although it's not immediately clear from the loading screen. The background artwork features a city skyline at night time with oriental ships sailing in the harbor.

For a game that was created in 2005, the symbol graphics are designed quite well. Obviously they don't stack up to the 3D slots that Amaya has made in the last 2 to 3 years, but they're good enough to establish the Asian theme.

Symbols that you'll see include the following:

• Oriental styled letters & numbers
• Fan
• Lantern
• Merchant ship
• Diamond

The diamond is the highest paying symbol, delivering you 10,000 coins when it appears five times in a pay line.

You will also see a Skyline scatter symbol, green monkey wild symbol, and Kitty, which is an Asian princess / starlet wild.

Kitty appears on reels 1, 2, 3, and 4 while the green monkey appears on reel 5. Both wilds substitute for all other symbols except the Skyline scatter.

It seems weird that Jade Idol contains different wild symbols for different reels; but, as you'll see in the bonus section, they unlock different rewards.

The Skyline scatter multiplies pay lines by 1x for 2 symbols, 5x for 3 symbols, 15x for 4 symbols, and 100x for 5 symbols. By getting five diamonds in a pay line combined with five Skyline scatters, you win this game's top possible pay out of 1 million credits.

Whenever the Skyline appears enough times to multiply one of your pay outs, it results in a cool animation where day turns to night.

Kitty also has a special animation, where the background turns green and you hear a club type jingle. When the green monkey helps form a winning combination, the background turns red and orange.

Bonus

You trigger a second screen bonus round when you land a Skyline on reel 1 and a monkey on reel 5. This takes you to an oriental palace or luxury suite, we're not sure which, where you're shown nine different boxes.

The goal is to select three matching symbols among the nine boxes in as few turns as possible. Once you get 3 matching symbols, you move on to the next round.

You continue playing until all three rounds are finished. If you don't manage to find three matching symbols, you'll be awarded a consolation prize of 2x the triggering bet.

Once all three rounds are over, you're taken to a city backdrop screen, where your score from each round is multiplied by your triggering bet and added up.

Please note that the bonus game is also totally predetermined whether or not there are enough matching symbols among the 9 boxes for you to win. For instance, you could pick all nine boxes in a round and not find three matches.

We played the bonus game twice and got just over 9x our triggering bet the first time and 6x our triggering bet the second time. According to the pay table, it's possible to get 500x your triggering wager, which is actually quite large for a slots bonus round.

You trigger 5 free spins when one Kitty symbol lands on reel 1 and one monkey symbol appears on reel 5. These free spins don't contain any special wild symbols, but your winning combinations will be multiplied 2x.

A common problem with many of the old CryptoLogic slots or even modern Amaya games is that it's really hard to unlock the bonus features. For example, when we played Captain Nemo, it took well over 100 spins to unlock the bonus round once.

Maybe we were just lucky when playing Jade Idol, but we managed to trigger free spins once and the bonus round twice in less than 100 spins. This would suggest that you can look forward to getting the bonus round and free spins quite frequently in Jade Idol.

Comparison to Other Amaya / CryptoLogic Slots

Most of CryptoLogic's early online slots are not among our favorites because they generally lack bonus features beyond free spins, and the graphics make the games look outdated.

However, Jade Idol differs in that the graphics, although not completely modern, are good enough to keep your mind off the fact that this game is from 2005. You can also appreciate the fact that Jade Idol includes a second screen bonus round, which isn't a hallmark of slots from this time period.

Some players may not like the setup of Jade Idol, though, since it only features nine pay lines in comparison to the 20 or 30 pay lines seen in most CryptoLogic / Amaya slots. The nine pay lines, combined with the slow spins that are found in most Amaya Games, mean that you won't be getting a lot of action for your playing time.

But overall, we like how Jade Idol compares to the CryptoLogic slots featured below, which were released around the same time period.

Released by CryptoLogic in 2007, the graphics in 20,000 Leagues make it seem much older than Jade Idol. The sound effects are also more basic, and the only bonus round consists of a few free spins.

The one advantage that 20,000 Leagues has over Jade Idol is its advanced betting tab, which allows you to set win and loss limits.

Released the same year as Jade Idol in 2005, Millionaires Club doesn't look anywhere close in terms of graphics or symbol designs. This game also only features 3 reels and one pay line.

Nevertheless, money and wealth usually combine to make a popular slots theme, and Millionaires Club spawned two sequels.

Doctor Love is the only slot here with slightly better graphics than Jade Idol, although this is somewhat unfair because CryptoLogic released it in 2009. The theme is very original too since we haven't seen any other slots that revolve around a love filled doctor.

However, we'd have to say that the features in Jade Idol are better because of the second screen bonus round; Doctor Love only allows you to get free spins.

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