Safari King Slot Review
Golden hour on the savanna, a reel cage built from lashed timber like a game-lodge deck, and a flat-topped acacia standing hazy in the distance: Safari King opens calmly and mostly stays that way. It’s a low volatility game where almost nothing dramatic happens until the free spins round starts filling the middle reels with lion wilds, and then it happens all at once. That restraint is the point.
Pragmatic Play build it on a 5×4 grid with 50 paylines, a 96.49% RTP, a maximum win of 2,500x the bet and bets from 0.50 to 250.00 per spin. The studio knows this terrain well: Great Rhino, Gems of Serengeti and African Elephant are all near neighbours. The lions here don’t chase. They wait, and the pride grows.
Base Game & Features
The base game runs across five reels and four rows, with wins paid left to right on 50 fixed paylines, starting from the leftmost reel. All wins are multiplied by the bet per line, and when several paylines land at once the wins are added together. Only the best combination on each line counts.
Stakes run from 0.50 to 250.00 per spin, adjusted through the bet menu with coins per line and coin value settings. The bet menu shows the number of lines in play alongside the current total bet in both coins and cash, and the credit and bet labels on the main interface toggle between the two views.
Playing the Game
Spin speed can be cycled between normal, quick and turbo, so the pace is yours to set. Autoplay is there for longer runs, and clicking the button again stops it. On desktop, the space bar and enter key both start and stop a spin, which makes manual play quicker than the button suggests.
The settings menu handles the rest: an intro screen toggle, separate switches for ambient sound and sound effects, and a game history page. Values are expressed as actual wins in coins throughout, and a malfunction voids all pays and plays, as ever.
Symbols and Pays
The paytable splits between safari animals and royal card symbols, and every value below is a multiple of the total bet:
- Elephant: 0.2x for two, 0.8x for three, 4x for four, 20x for five
- Rhino: 0.8x for three, 3x for four, 10x for five
- Cheetah: 0.08x for two, 0.8x for three, 3x for four, 10x for five
- Zebra: 0.5x for three, 2.5x for four, 8x for five
- Antelope: 0.4x for three, 2x for four, 8x for five
- A: 0.4x for three, 1.5x for four, 8x for five
- K: 0.4x for three, 1x for four, 6x for five
- Q: 0.2x for three, 0.8x for four, 4x for five
- J: 0.2x for three, 0.6x for four, 4x for five
- 10 and 9: 0.2x for three, 0.4x for four, 3x for five
Only the two biggest animals pay for a pair; everything else needs three from the left, and the royals cluster at the bottom of the table. The gap between the elephant and the low royals is wide, but a 50-line grid gives five-of-a-kind combinations plenty of routes to land on.
The elephant is the paying star, but the lion is the symbol that matters. It’s the wild, it sits only on reels two to five, and it stands in for everything except the Bonus symbol. The Bonus symbol appears on reels one, three and five, and landing all three opens the free spins round.
Volatility and Pacing
This is a low volatility game, and the design leans on that from the ground up. Small and mid-sized wins arrive steadily, the paytable’s top end is modest, and the biggest swings are reserved for the bonus round rather than the base reels. For a 50-line game it plays calmly.
Safari King Free Spins & Bonuses
Three Bonus symbols on reels one, three and five pays 4x the total bet and awards eight free spins. The round runs on special reels, and it works like this:
- Before every free spin, including the first, one lion wild is added to each of reels two, three, four and five
- Those wilds stay on the reels for the entire round
- Every Bonus symbol that lands during the round awards one extra free spin
- There’s no limit on how many extra spins you can win
The wild-adding rule is the whole character of the round. Before the very first spin, four lions are already locked in, one on each of the middle reels. Spin two adds four more, spin three four more again, and nothing removes any of them.
Because the wilds stack rather than replace, the middle reels grow denser every spin. Each new lion joins the ones already there, so by the eighth spin the board can carry a substantial share of wilds, and any animal line that lands has a strong chance of connecting through them.
The leftmost reel is the one to watch. It’s the only place a paying line can start, and it never receives wilds, so every combination still needs a real symbol on reel one to lead it off. The lions make the middle of the board reliable; the first reel decides whether anything comes of it.
Retriggers keep the momentum going. A single Bonus symbol is enough for another spin, so a lucky round can extend well past its starting eight. Because the accumulated wilds are never cleared, an extended round can finish with several paylines paying at once through the same stacked lions.
Free spins wins are added to the payline win, and the total for the whole cycle is paid once the round completes. Wins land in the same left-to-right, best-per-line way as the base game, just on a board that gets denser with wilds every spin.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.2/10
Playing Safari King is a long drink at the waterhole: quiet, steady, punctuated by small wins, and worth sitting through for the one moment the pride arrives. The free spins round is that moment, and it’s the single reason to pick this over the studio’s louder savanna titles.
The strength is how the round is built. Because the lions never leave and every retrigger adds four more, an extended round pays better the longer it runs. The weakness is the base game around it: the paytable tops out at 20x for five elephants, and between bonuses there’s not much on the board to get excited about.
It’s for players who like a slow build and a bonus that compounds, and who’d rather grind out steady spins than chase a headline multiple. Anyone hunting five-figure ceilings will find this savanna far too tame, and they’d be right to pass it by. For everyone else, it’s a calm, well-made slot with one genuinely clever idea at its centre.
Safari King FAQs
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What is the RTP of Safari King?
The RTP is 96.49%, which sits just above the typical average for an online slot. -
How do you trigger free spins in Safari King?
Land three Bonus symbols on reels one, three and five. That pays 4x your total bet and awards eight free spins. -
Can free spins retrigger in Safari King?
Yes. Every Bonus symbol that lands during the round awards one extra free spin, and there’s no limit on how many you can win. -
How do the lion wilds work during free spins?
Before every free spin, including the first, one lion wild is placed on each of reels two, three, four and five. They stay locked there for the whole round, so the middle reels fill up with lions as the round goes on. -
What does the lion wild substitute for?
Everything except the Bonus symbol. In the base game it can only land on the middle four reels, which is also where it stacks up during free spins. -
How many paylines does Safari King have?
Safari King has 50 fixed paylines on a 5×4 grid, with all wins paying left to right from the leftmost reel and only the best combination counting on each line. -
What is the maximum win on Safari King?
The maximum win is 2,500x the bet. -
Is Safari King high volatility?
No. It’s a low volatility game, so wins come more often but in smaller amounts, with the bigger swings reserved for the free spins round.
