Sahara Riches Cash Collect

Sahara Riches Cash Collect Slot Review

A white palace with golden onion domes rises from the dunes at one edge of the screen, an oasis fringed with palms sits at the other, and the reels turn between them inside a border of ornate gold filigree. It’s a handsome, painterly desert. What Playtech has built inside that frame is a slot with one narrow piece of arithmetic at its heart: nearly everything this game pays, it pays through a single symbol on a single reel.

The 5×3 grid and 30 paylines are the conventional furniture around it. The studio’s catalogue runs deep in this territory, from Big Bad Wolf: Cash Collect & Link to Fire Blaze: Jinns Moon and Buffalo Blitz, but this one is the plainest expression of the mechanic. Strip away the scenery and there’s a tidy little engine underneath, and the reels do the digging.

Base Game and Paytable

Wins pay left to right across the 30 fixed paylines, and the line bet is your total bet divided by 30. Only the highest combination counts on each line, which is standard. The interest is in the symbols, because the paytable is where this game shows its teeth, or rather doesn’t.

The top-paying symbol is the Treasure Chest. After that the values step down quickly, and the royals at the bottom pay modestly. Here’s the full ladder, as multiples of the total bet:

• Treasure Chest – 0.3x for three, 1.5x for four, 6x for five
• Camel – 0.3x for three, 1x for four, 4x for five
• Perfume Bottle – 0.2x for three, 0.8x for four, 3x for five
• Dagger – 0.2x for three, 0.5x for four, 2.5x for five
• Hourglass – 0.2x for three, 0.5x for four, 2.5x for five
• A, K, Q, J – 0.1x for three, 0.4x for four, 1.5x for five

Read that again at the top end. Five Treasure Chests, the best line in the game, returns six times the total bet. The line wins are small by design, because the real money doesn’t come from the paytable.

It comes from the coins.

The Wild substitutes for all symbols except coins, Prizes, Free Games coins and the Cash Collect™ itself, so it’s a line-win helper and nothing more. It won’t build a collection for you, and it won’t complete one either.

Numbered coins land on the reels carrying cash values, and they sit there doing nothing until something collects them.

That something has to arrive on reel five.

Cash Collect™

Landing the Cash Collect™ symbol on reel 5 gathers every coin, Prize and Free Games coin on the screen at once. That single rule is the whole game. Reel five is the only reel that carries it in the base game, so the tension on every spin is whether the right side of the grid cooperates while the coins stack up on the other four.

The coins themselves carry fixed cash amounts tied to your bet size. It’s a blunt mechanic, and an effective one. When the collect symbol finally lands, everything clears in a single settlement, which is the moment the whole design has been building towards.

Free Games

Free Games coins are collected the same way as cash coins: a Cash Collect™ on reel five gathers them all and activates the round. The number of spins awarded equals the sum of every Free Games coin number on the reels when the trigger lands, so a screen with coins reading 3, 5 and 10 would pay out 18 free spins.

Inside the round, two things change:

• Cash Collect™ symbols appear on all five reels, not just the fifth
• Each Cash Collect™ that lands stays frozen in place for three spins, sweeping the screen on each of them
• Any Cash Collect™ also picks up new Free Games coins, adding their numbers to the remaining spin total

That frozen timer is where the round’s potential lives. A run of collect symbols early in the round turns the middle reels into a bank of sweepers that hoover up every coin that arrives.

Stack two or three sticky collect symbols while Free Games coins keep landing, and the spin count grows while the collections compound. The round can run for a long while on a single trigger.

The Prize Ladder

Land a Prize symbol anywhere on the reels alongside a Cash Collect™ and you win one of the four jackpots. The Prize is chosen at random, and each can be won multiple times in a session. The four tiers, from the top down:

• GRAND – the biggest of the four
• MAJOR – the second tier
• MINOR – the third tier
• MINI – the smallest Prize

Each Prize grants a fixed amount based on your bet value, so the tiers scale with your stake rather than growing as a pot. No maximum win figure is advertised for this one.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7/10

Playing this is mostly watching coins pile up on four reels while you wait for the fifth to do its one job. That’s the entire appeal, and it’s a real one: when the collect symbol finally lands, the whole screen settles at once, and no other moment in the game matches it.

The Free Games round is the strongest thing here, because the sticky collect symbols let one trigger snowball into a long, compounding run. The weakness is everything around that run. The line pays are thin, and a fixed Prize ladder is a modest ceiling next to what the bigger jackpot games now advertise.

This is a slot for people who enjoy the collect formula stripped to its barest form and who are content with a ladder rather than a lottery ticket. The four-figure-max crowd will find this desert dry. The rest can take the walk to the oasis; for them, the water’s worth it.

Sahara Riches Cash Collect FAQs

• How does the Cash Collect™ feature work in Sahara Riches Cash Collect?

  When the Cash Collect™ symbol lands on reel 5, it sweeps up every coin, Prize and Free Games coin showing on the reels in one settlement. In the base game, the collect symbol only appears on the fifth reel.
• How do you trigger the Free Games in Sahara Riches Cash Collect?

  A Cash Collect™ symbol on reel 5 collects all Free Games coins on the reels and activates the round. The number of free spins equals the sum of all the numbers on those coins combined.
• What is different about Cash Collect™ during Free Games?

  During Free Games, Cash Collect™ symbols appear on all five reels rather than just reel 5. Any that land lock in place for the next three spins and gather everything collectable on the screen for as long as they remain.
• What are the Prize jackpots in Sahara Riches Cash Collect?

  There are four Prizes: GRAND, MAJOR, MINOR and MINI. Land a Prize symbol anywhere on the reels with a Cash Collect™ to win one, chosen at random. Each pays a fixed amount based on your bet, and each can be won multiple times.
• Can the Free Games round be retriggered in Sahara Riches Cash Collect?

  Yes. Free Games coins continue to appear during the round, and any Cash Collect™ that lands collects them, adding their combined numbers to your remaining spin total.
• How many paylines does Sahara Riches Cash Collect have?

  The game has 30 fixed paylines. All wins pay left to right, and the line bet is your total bet divided by 30, with only the highest win paying on each line.
• What is the grid size of Sahara Riches Cash Collect?

  Sahara Riches Cash Collect plays on a 5×3 grid, five reels and three rows.
• Who makes Sahara Riches Cash Collect?

  Sahara Riches Cash Collect is a Playtech slot, and its release date is 23 April 2021.