SunTide Pokie
Anyone feeling a chill could perhaps feel a little warmer by playing SunTide, a 5 reel pokie from Microgaming that features various tropical fruits and a bright orange background to give off a sunny vibe.
Some nice bonus features like expanding wilds and a rewarding free spins round could also brighten up the day of anyone playing this eye-catching game, while simple graphics and an easy to follow format could make it a good starting point for anyone new to the wonderful world of online Poker machines.
Sunshine On A Rainy Day
Although it’s certainly bright and colourful enough, the graphics remain pretty simple, with a subtly shaded orange background behind the reels, which doesn’t feature much in the way of any images other than a couple of birds flapping their way into the sunset and a shiny gold title above the reels.
Instead it focusses the attention on what’s happening with the main game, where we see equally simple, but clear symbols that create winning combinations when they line up across any of the 9 paylines.
Players are given a reasonable range of potential bet sizes to play with. At the lowest end, they can activate just a single payline and bet 0.01 on a spin, although this obviously means that any winning combinations that fall on in-active lines won’t count, so to be sure of claiming them all, the whole game can be played for 0.09 per spin.
The value of a coin can be adjusted up to 1.00 and up to 5 coins can be played on each line to give a maximum bet amount of 45.00.
By selecting Autoplay, between 10 and 100 spins can run without any input needed, while they can also be set to end when winnings or losses reach per-set amounts.
Classic images of different types of fruit take up the lower part of the payouts, with cherries, strawberries, lemons, watermelons and oranges making up winning lines whenever 3, 4 or 5 of the same type stop across an active line on sequential reels running from the left side.
Bigger rewards come from the gold bars, a bell, purple 7 and finally there’s a diamond that tops the table, while a couple of bonus features are triggered by wild and scatter symbols.
SunTide
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Bonus Features
A shiny gold coin serves as the wild, and landing just 2 examples of this across a line will be enough for a win, while getting it right across the reels will result in the game jackpot being paid out. As it’s wild, it will also replace any other symbol, with the exception of the scatter, if it can complete a winning combination by doing so.
If it needs to, the wild will expand across the middle reel to complete a line, which is a useful feature to have and can even result in multiple payouts from a single spin.
During the free spins round, this expanding wild feature can occur across reels 2, 3 and 4, leading to the potential for lots more wins throughout them.
Those free spins start off when the scatter symbols lands in any 3 or more positions anywhere on the reels. The scatter is a nice image of yachts and palm trees, set against a sunset and is the only concession to the sunshine theme to actually to make it onto a symbol.
Two scatters will pay a prize of 2x the total amount staked per spin, which unlike other symbols that pay multiples of the amount staked per line, while 3, 4 or 5 pays out 5x, 20x and 100x respectively, while then starting off 15 free spins.
If 3 or more scatters should land at once during the free spins round, an additional 15 will be added to the end of any still left to play out.
The Verdict
SunTide is actually part of a series of pokies like Summertime and SunQuest that have similar themes and share many of the same symbols. Bonus rounds are different however and this one has some decent extras that make it a little more varied than others.
It remains a fairly basic game in appearance though and has a limited amount of visual flair. The fruit symbols are found across numerous pokies and the wild is really the only one that stands out, but many people like to see familiar icons and as there’s basically nothing wrong with SunTide, it could be well worth a play.