Head on Safari With Outback Gold Hold and Win From iSoftBet

Developers stay away from Australian-themed pokies for reasons unknown to use. iSoftBet bucked this trend with Outback Gold Hold and Win, which launched September 16.

The game has positives and negatives in equal measure, as you will read about shortly. We put Outback Gold Hold and Win through its paces; this is what we discovered.

Outback Gold Hold and Win Fundamentals

It is refreshing to see an Aussie-themed pokie in online casinos because less than three dozen of them are dotted around. Everything has an Australian touch leading to you feeling at home while playing.

Outback Gold Hold and Win takes place on a 5×3 layout with 25 ways to win. $0.25 is the minimum bet, with $25 the maximum. The relatively low maximum bet will put off high rollers from playing this machine.

iSoftbet created this game with a 96% RTP or a house edge of exactly 4%. This puts the machine firmly in the average camp. It is probably a fair figure because the game has medium volatility.

Maximum payouts are, bizarrely, relatively small. Triggering the Mega Jackpot awards 1,000 times your stack. This increases to 5,000 times with multipliers in play. This equates to $1,250 at the minimum bet and $125,000 at the max. Those seem like generous payouts, but iSoftBet’s Tyrant King Megaways has a 50,000 times jackpot.

What Are The Outback Gold Hold and Win Symbols?

iSoftBet’s attempts to recreate the Australian outback are solid. The symbols are clean and vibrant and do their jobs as you expect. Royals jacks through aces are the low-value symbols. Kangaroos and other Aussie animals represent the higher-value symbols. The highest-value symbols pay 16 times for landing five.

Road signs are the wilds, which always land stacks. They appear on all five reels and substitute for all non-scatter symbols. Speaking of which, gold or platinum coins trigger the Hold and Win feature. Land five anywhere on the board to start the feature.

What Are The Game’s Bonuses and Features?

Hold and Win is the main feature of Outback Gold Hold and Win, as the name suggests. Land five or more gold and platinum coins anywhere on the board to trigger the feature.

Money symbols become sticky on a fresh grid. Only jackpot coins, gold coins, and blanks land during the feature. You receive three respins with the counter resetting to three if you land a non-blank symbol. In addition, the non-blank symbols become sticky.

The multiplier is x1 by default but increases +1 for each platinum coin on screen if you start the feature with those platinum coins.

A trio of jackpots can be hit. The Mini Jackpot pays 20 times your stake, The Major Jackpot awards 200 times your stake, with the Mega Jackpot paying out 1,000 times your stake.

The base game has a random feature called Lightning Modifier. Lightning strikes between reels leading to larger payouts, the triggering of Hold and Win, or turning gold coins into platinum.

Conclusion

Outback Gold Hold and Win is a confusing pokie, not because it is complicated but because of how iSoftbet created it. Having another Aussie-themed machine is a significant positive, especially to our readers. Being medium variance is another positive, especially with so many highly volatile machines doing the rounds.

Then comes the weirdness. The maximum bet size of $25 is meagre when some pokies allow $100, $200, and more. iSfotbet may have done this as a way of responsible gambling, but it seems strange to stop high rollers from playing the game at all.

Furthermore, the maximum payout of 1,000 times your stake is very low. It increases to up to 5,000 times with multipliers in play, but that is still low.

Should you play Outback Gold Hold and Win? Sure, it is a resounding yes from us. Will you get rich from this machine? It is improbable.