Cats Slot Review

The title of Cats might suggest that this slot machine is dedicated to the cute pets that a lot of people own and raise, but actually its theme is based on wild felines, the predators of Africa. With lions, mountain lions, leopards and other dangerous felines present on its reels, it looks a lot more dangerous than you’d imagine based on its title. IGT’s game has up to 30 active lines, a setup with 5x3 reels and it will offer rewards that can reach top values of 10,000x. You get as you play access to wild symbols, to single and double symbols, to scatters and free spins. It’s a very unusual game feature wise, which I think is a good thing here.

The slot’s bets will allow you to select up to 30 active lines, and the unusual part is that you can actually reduce the number, which is an option that IGT doesn’t always give. You can select coin denominations, starting at $1 and going higher from there. As always, an IGT slot machine will allow for very high bets, for the players that can afford them.

The action of Cats doesn’t take place in the living room of some house, since the focus is on wild cats and not on the ones you have at home. You have the beautiful African savannah in the background image, with the big yellow Sun in the sky and with trees visible from place to place. The reels have two types of symbols, half of them interesting, the others not so much. The less interesting symbols that you have access to will be the ones which have the images of the poker cards, coming in colors like green, pink or red. The ones that you should be paying attention to are the symbols which show you the cats. There are both single and double variants for each of the cat symbols, which have images of black panthers, lions, tigers, leopards and mountain lions. The feature symbols, last on the list, have a logo and some paw prints. The images of the predators and those from the feature symbols are OK, as is the image you see in the background or the decorations used on the reels. The downside is, as is often the case, with the poker cards, which are very simple and not themed at all. Overall, not the best looking slot machine, but I’d say better than some other IGT titles.

There is one major aspect of the game, which you will rarely see in other titles, and it’s the way you can form combinations with single or double symbols. The single symbols have one image of the feline, the double ones have two obviously. The combinations that you form will take into account how many felines are visible, not the number of symbols. You can form high paying combinations with 3 to 10 felines in them. Only the feline icons have this ability, to appear in double versions. The poker cards are going to be forming combinations of up to 5 symbols only. You’re going to have other feature symbols as well, one example being the Cats Logo wild, which you will actually use to get the top jackpot of 10,000 coins from the slot. You have to form a combo with five wilds in it, if you want that top prize. Wilds will not replace Paws scatters, and when substituting for cat symbols they are counted as double icons. The scatter symbols, which have Paws showing on them, also come in single and double variants. Only the three reels from the middle can get them though. You are required to land 5 or 6 paws (from up to three double Paws icons), in order to get 5 or 10 free spins triggered. If you have four paws visible, then you get just a prize worth 2x total bet. The free spins can’t be triggered again. The paytable mentions that the reels from the free spins are different from the ones used in the base game, but it doesn’t mention if they’re going to be more profitable or not.

IGT has included a jackpot of 10,000 coins in Cats, which is actually a decent reward to go after. The downside is the average RTP, which is apparently between 93% and 94.93%. It’s an almost acceptable RTP if it’s on the higher side of the range, but it’s more likely to be somewhere in the middle. This part of the game I’m not too happy about.

Cats has the right theme and the right plot twist for it, has decent graphics and some very unusual features, which are fun to take advantage of. What it doesn’t have is a high average RTP, so it doesn’t give you as good of a chance as others to make a profit with it. There are better slots out there, in every single area, so I wouldn’t go with this one.