Into the Storm

Into the Storm Review

Into the Storm was a pleasant surprise in a different setting. You’re taken onboard a Viking longship this time, and the excellent soundtrack will certainly get you in the mood for some serious rowing. The base game comes with a randomly triggered walking wild respin feature, and it’s calm waters until you hit the bonus round.

The scenery changes dramatically as you enter “into the storm”, and thunderbolts slice through the night sky like sparks from Thor’s hammer. The grid is expanded as the hold-and-win style bonus round starts, and you get up to 3 Kraken Hot Zones with position multipliers up front. More can land during the feature however, and you also get 3 modifier symbols to help you close in on the 10,000x potential (which is cracked if you fill the screen).

Into the Storm Slot Features

The premium symbols consist of a viking helmet and 3 viking characters, and they pay between 4 and 20 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins. Regular wild symbols can also land, and these step in for pay symbols to help complete wins. Wilds hold no value of their own, but they can assist in the sole base game feature.

You get a Wild Respins feature at random times in the base game, and this awards 2, 3 or 4 Walking Wilds that move one step to the left or right per respin. All walking wilds move in the same direction, and walking wilds that land on a regular wild get upgraded with +1 added to the multiplier. The respins feature ends when all walking wilds are gone from the reels.

The Into the Storm Bonus Round triggers when you land 3, 4 or 5 Kraken bonus scatters anywhere on a base game spin. This awards 1, 2 or 3 Kraken Hot Zones, respectively, and you start with 3 spin lives on a 9x5 grid. Each position can land blanks, sticky multiplier symbols of x1 to x3, or sticky modifier symbols. Any non-blank symbol resets the spin tally to 3, and here’s an overview of the modifier 3 symbols:

• Hammer - triggers a lightning bolt that doubles a random selection of present multiplier symbol values.
• Treasure Chest - collects the value of all multiplier symbols onto itself, and the value is then added to the total.
• Viking Coin - gives you 4 spin lives instead of 3 for the duration of the feature.

The Kraken symbol(s) you got upfront, as well as any new Kraken symbols that land, create a Hot Zone around them. Basically, multipliers of x2 to x5 are created in all adjacent spaces, but these are not regular multiplier symbols. Overlapping Hot Zone multipliers are multiplied with each other, and a Hot Zone position multiplier will boost any regular multiplier symbol that lands on that position accordingly.

The Into the Storm Bonus Round ends when you either run out of spins, or you manage to fill the whole grid with non-blank symbols. The latter increases the total win to 10,000x your stake, while otherwise you’ll win the total sum of your accumulated multipliers.

Finally, non-UK players, and anyone living in an eligible jurisdiction, can take advantage of the Buy Pass feature. You get 3 different bonus buy choices, and you’ll basically pay 105x, 145x or 185x your stake for at least 3, 4 or 5 scatters, respectively, on the spin that follows. The feature triggers organically once in 221 spins on average.

The 200 Spins Into the Storm Slot Experience

You get a bit of smooth sailing in the base game, before we purchase the Into The Storm bonus round at 1:24 into the 4:47-minute highlights video. We bought the top-tier feature with 3 starting Kraken Hot Zones of course, and you can see for yourself how it all played out by hitting the play button below.

Review Summary

First of all, we really like the viking ship setting and the robust feel of the game. Even with the turbo switched on you still get time to savor each spin, and the game thus insists confidently that every spin matters. We usually want to be able to plow through base game spins quickly, but it didn’t bother us much in this release. Perhaps the impressive and enjoyable soundtrack had something to do with that, and it’s dramatically taken up several notches when you literally ride into the storm as the bonus round triggers.

The Kraken Hot Zone concept is highly innovative, and it basically defines the feature. The downside is the relatively low multiplier values, making it hard to close in on the 10,000x potential without actually filling the grid. Still, this is way above the run-of-the-mill hold & win stuff we see every week, but it’s probably best to give this one a go when you have some time on your hands.

If you enjoy Into the Storm Slot you should also try:

Money Cart 2 - is a version of Money Train 2 for those unable to buy the bonus round. The feature triggers usually within 10 base game spins, and you get the same 9 modifier symbols as in the original release. The difference is the 5,000x potential, but you get to play with regular stakes instead of paying 100x, and the RTP is 98 %.

Sails of Fortune - takes you onboard a pirate ship, and this Relax Gaming release comes with mystery map symbols that trigger walking mystery symbol respins in the base game. These are fully expanded in the bonus round, which can lead to solid payouts up to 62,208x your stake.

Masters Of Valhalla - is a highly volatile Norse mythology installment from Snowborn Games, and you’ll collect wilds to unleash the God Respin feature at random times. The Valhalla Bonus Round is clearly inspired by MT2, and you get 6 special symbols that can lead to 20,000x payouts.