Crystal Kingdom Slot Machine

Crystal Kingdom is a 5 reel, 40 pay line slot machine that was produced by High 5 Games and licensed to IGT. You can find Crystal Kingdom available in both land based and online casinos.

This game takes you to a winter wonderland filled with ice palaces, kings, queens, and polar bears in gold armor.

Crystal Kingdom isn’t based on any particular TV show or movie. But it bears a resemblance to the 2013 animated Disney film Frozen.

We certainly would say that Crystal Kingdom is as classic as Frozen, which grossed almost $1.28 billion at box offices. But Crystal Kingdom does offer a few quality points.

See what they are as we discuss this game’s setup, background, music, animations, payouts, graphics, bonuses, and comparisons to similar slot machines.

Crystal Kingdom features tumbling reels, a.k.a. cascading reels, where symbols from winning combinations disappear and leave open spaces on the reels. This allows symbols from above to fall intothese empty spaces and form more wins.

The reels continue tumbling until no additional wins can be formed. The big perk here is that you can form multiple payouts on the same turn without risking more money.

Once wins have stopped, all symbols from the previous turn disappear, and a completely new set of symbols fall from the top of the screen.

The reels dominate most of the screen, so you don’t get much of a chance to see the background. What is visible consists of palace towers, the game title, and ice.

Considering how little of the ice palace you see, this background won’t motivate you to keep playing Crystal Palace by itself.

But the different shades of icy blue at least do an adequate job of setting the theme.

When you spin the reels, you’ll hear music that sounds like it’s from a game show. This isn’t to say that the music is bad, but it doesn’t come close to fitting the theme.

The sound effects during winning payouts are better since they sound magical, like what you’d expect from this game.

Thanks to the payout sound effects, we rate Crystal Palace as average in this category.

The animations run together in this game, but you’ll notice slight nuances during winning payouts.

Animations include: letters disappearing in a cloud of sparkles, the Crystal King disappearing into a purple portal, the polar bear spinning around and turning into ice bits, the Crystal Queendisappearing into a blue portal, the wild symbol featuring bursts of colors, and fireworks shooting over the reels during big wins.

Crystal Kingdom has a unique payout structure, where certain symbols feature double characters. When you get the double characters, this counts as 2 symbols in the same space.

Considering this aspect, the main characters can offer payouts for up to 10 symbols, which you can see below:

• Crystal Kingdom Icon Wild

  The wild symbol substitutes for every symbol except the bonus icon. When substituting for the queen, king, or bear, the Crystal Kingdom icon counts as 2 symbols in the same space.

• Free Games Bonus

  The Free Games icon appears on the first three reels. It triggers between 6 and 16 free spins when it appears 3 or more times anywhere on the reels.

• Crystal Queen

  Appearing only on reels 1 and 4, the queen pays 5,000 credits for 10 symbols, 1000 for 9 symbols, 500 for 8 symbols, 400 for 7 symbols, 100 for 6 symbols, 50 for 5 symbols, 25 for 4, and 15for 3.

• Crystal King

  Appearing only on reels 2 and 5, the king pays 1,000 credits for 10 symbols, 750 for 9 symbols, 400 for 8 symbols, 200 for 7 symbols, 75 for 6 symbols, 30 for 5 symbols, 20 for 4, and 10 for3.

• Polar Bear

  Appearing only on reels 1 and 4, the king pays 750 credits for 10 symbols, 500 for 9 symbols, 250 for 8 symbols, 100 for 7 symbols, 50 for 6 symbols, 25 for 5 symbols, 15 for 4, and 10 for 3.

• A

  The A offers 200 credits for 5 symbols, 40 for 4, and 8 for 3.

• K

  The K pays 150 credits for 5 symbols, 20 for 4, and 5 for 3.

• Q

  The Q offers 125 credits for 5 symbols, 15 for 4, and 5 for 3.

• J, 10

  The J and 10 pay 100 credits for 5 symbols, 15 for 4, and 5 for 3.

The symbols in Crystal Kingdom look above average, with the polar bear featuring the best detail of any symbol.

The king and queen look decent, but their quality isn’t on the same level as the bear.

Our main gripe about the symbols is that High 5 used generic letters and a number for the low payouts. Considering that there are only 3 character symbols and two icons, High 5 should’ve added afew other unique symbols instead of using letters and a number.

The main feature in this game is the tumbling reels, which allow you to form consecutive payouts as winning symbols disappear and symbols from above take their place.

But Crystal Kingdom also offers a bonus round, which consists of 6 16 free spins that you trigger through 3 or more Free Games icons. Here’s a closer look at what you can expect from the freespins.

Free games are rarely triggered in this slot because you can only land Free Game icons on the first three reels.

When you finally do trigger free spins, fireworks shoot across the reels and the Free Games icons light up. You’ll also see the reels turn to an icy blue, while music plays for the duration ofyour free games.

One perk that helps you win more often is that the Free Games icon becomes a special wild. Combined with the Crystal Kingdom icon, this gives you two wild symbols on the reels.

Once your free spins are over, your win is added up and the reels go back to normal.

You can adjust pay lines from 1 40, and you can change your coin denomination from $0.01 to $2.00. This makes for a minimum bet of $0.01 per spin and a max wager of $80.00.

Considering that you’re eligible for all the features regardless of your bet size, you can wager as little as you want and not be penalized.

You can use the Auto play option to keep the reels spinning automatically for anywhere from 5 to 25 spins.

This game also offers a Replay option, which allows you to re watch any big win or bonus that you’ve accumulated.

One more option is the ability to turn sound on and off by clicking the speaker icon near the spin button.

The win frequency for Crystal Kingdom is high for a 40 pay line slot. This is surprising when considering the tumbling reels aspect that helps you form multiple wins on the same turn.

But most of the prizes that we got were from the lower paying letters and numbers. We were betting one cent on all 40 pay lines, and we saw a lot of wins in the $0.05 to $1.00 range.

Despite the small prizes, the fact that you win so often in Crystal Kingdom makes it fun to play.

Crystal Kingdom’s rules are different from standard slot machines due to the tumbling reels. Here’s a brief look at the main rules for this game:

• All winning combinations are formed from left to right, except for scatters, which can pay anywhere.
• If two or more wins are formed in the same pay line, only the highest paying win counts.
• Winning symbols for payouts disappear, allowing symbols from above to drop down and form more wins.
• Tumbling reels continue until no more payouts can be formed.
• Payouts are made based on the amount bet per pay line.
• Free spins are played at the triggering coin denomination and pay line amount.

Crystal Kingdom is unique in that there aren’t many other slot machines that deal with kings and queens in artic climates. This is surprising considering the popularity of the movie Frozen.

But we did find a couple of slot machines based on ice/winter to compare with Crystal Kingdom. You can take a look at these comparisons below.

Developed by Rival Gaming, Polar Fox is a 5 reel, 20 pay line slot available at online casinos.

This game is about searching ice filled caves for ancient artifacts. The symbols reflect this since they include an ice pick, ski mask, climbing shoes, bones, a treasure map, stone hammer, andvarious pieces of treasure.

One thing that we like about Ice Picks is the background, which is a deep and icy cave. Unlike with Crystal Kingdom, it’s easy to see this detailed background too since the reels don’t block yourview.

Another good aspect to Ice Picks is the graphics, which offer high quality 3D images.

If you land 3 or more treasure maps anywhere on the reels, you’ll trigger the bonus, where you pick from 20 ice blocks to reveal hidden treasure. You can also trigger free spins by getting 3 ormore compasses anywhere on the reels.

Overall, we like Ice Picks more than Crystal Kingdom. The only catch is that Ice Picks has a really niche theme, whereas Crystal Kingdom has a broader them that’ll appeal to a wider audience.

Developed by Novomatic, this 5 reel, 9 pay line slot deals with cute animals in an artic environment. The animals include a polar fox, snowy owl, snowshoe hare, otter, porcupine, and snow mouse.

The polar fox pays a large prize worth 9,000 credits when you land 5 in a pay line. You can also trigger 15 free spins when landing the scatter symbol 3 or more times anywhere on the reels.

Like Crystal Kingdom, Polar Fox’s reels take up most of the background. This makes it hard to see the wintery atmosphere that the game offers.

Another downside to Polar Fox is that the graphics aren’t anywhere near the quality that you’ll see in Crystal Kingdom or Ice Picks.

Considering the poor graphics and minimal features, Polar Fox is only worth playing if you like the snow covered animals aspect.

While king and queen slot machines are nothing new, Crystal Kingdom steps outside the box by placing this royal family in an artic world.

Crystal Kingdom sells the theme with sparkly animations during winning payouts, an icy background, and polar bears.

The most interesting aspect of this slot machine is the tumbling reels, which see winning symbols disappear and new symbols take their place. This keeps the excitement rolling as you can continuepicking up wins long after your turn is finished.

Thanks to the tumbling reels, you can also expect to win frequently. Most of the prizes are small, but it’s still nice to win on many of your spins.

Downsides to Crystal Kingdom include that the background is dominated by the reels, and the only bonus is free spins.

Aside from a fancy opening and ending animation, the free spins are basic and don’t stand out as a bonus. Regarding the background, it would be nice to see more of the ice palace, rather thanglimpses of the towers.