18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The cheapest shark in the ocean was the one that nearly saved the session.
No number in its mouth.
No blue Orb.
No FRENZY label.
No x3 stamped across its face.
Just a normal green shark showing enough teeth to make swimming nearby an unreasonable hobby.
Three of them connected after the Free Spins had finished.
€6.40.
My balance moved to €98.80.
Five minutes earlier, Deep Sea Frenzy had shown me a shark worth 15x the bet.
That one paid nothing.
The difference was not size.
Not teeth.
Not rarity.
The expensive shark had arrived without another shark on reel five to confirm that anybody should collect it.
The ordinary shark had simply brought two friends.
That was the entire underwater economy.
I had started with €100.00 and €1.00 spins.
The reels sat inside a bright blue ocean with coral on both sides, a treasure chest sunk into the left corner and a sailing ship on the right that seemed unusually relaxed about the number of sharks appearing nearby.
Five reels.
Four rows.
Fifty paylines.
Hammerheads.
Green sharks.
Red sharks.
Ships.
Treasure chests.
Then the usual A, K, Q, J, 10 and 9 symbols floating around at depths where playing cards had presumably evolved gills.
The first few spins stayed tame.
A line of card symbols paid €1.00.
Two paylines involving ships brought €2.40.
A shark line produced €3.20.
The golden Wild helped another route reach the fifth reel.
€4.00.
Nothing suggested that sharks would eventually begin carrying numerical values like they had been weighed at some extremely dangerous fish market.
Then the blue Money symbols started appearing.
They were sharks too.
Because apparently the slot had looked at a perfectly serviceable cash Orb and decided what it needed was a mouth.
One showed 2x.
Another 1x.
Then a 5x shark appeared several spins later.
They could land across the first four reels.
Reel five was different.
That was where the Collect sharks lived.
FRENZY.
x2.
x3.
x5.
+1 SPIN.
The entire mechanism had been designed around a simple underwater truth:
Sharks on the left could have money.
A shark on the right had to notice them.
The first several arrangements did nothing important.
Two Money sharks.
No Collect.
Three Money sharks.
Wrong fifth reel.
A Collect appeared when only a couple of blue Orbs were around.
No serious event.
The normal symbols kept paying little amounts between them.
My balance moved through €96.
€93.
Back to €97 after a useful Wild.
Then came seven Money sharks.
Seven.
The first four reels were crowded with blue mouths carrying values.
Reel five supplied a Collect.
For a moment the screen looked finished.
It was not.
Normal play wanted eight Money symbols alongside the Collect before the proper Free Spins event would open.
I had seven.
The seventh shark looked exactly as committed as an eighth shark would have looked.
The ocean did not care.
No feature.
The symbols cleared.
I stayed on the result for a moment.
Seven sharks had assembled.
Another shark had arrived specifically to collect sharks.
Everybody was present except one additional shark.
Deep Sea Frenzy had apparently built an underwater ceremony with a minimum attendance requirement.
There was another way to play.
I turned on the Ante.
The €1.00 stake became €1.60.
Now seven Money symbols with the Collect would be enough.
The chance of reaching the Free Spins setup was higher too.
The Buy Feature button remained untouched.
I had already seen seven sharks arrive naturally.
They could find one another again.
That decision accelerated the descent.
The paylines still paid.
Just not at the same speed the €1.60 spins left.
A hammerhead line returned €4.80.
Two small card wins arrived together.
€2.40.
A Wild connected a red shark through the middle for €5.60.
Then several spins offered nothing beyond individual Money sharks blinking from the first four reels while reel five supplied ordinary symbols.
The blue Orbs became increasingly personal.
Four on one spin.
No Collect.
Five later.
No Collect.
A x3 Collect arrived on a spin containing only one Money symbol.
The sea had the pieces.
It preferred storing them in different tides.
The balance reached €76.
Then €69.
A good ship line pushed it above €73.
The Ante pulled it back down.
At €61.60, six Money sharks appeared with a Collect.
Six.
Under normal play, that would have been two short.
Under the Ante, it was now only one short.
Progress had become a question of how many glowing predators could fit into sixteen positions before reel five remembered its role.
A few spins later, the balance showed €58.40.
The reels stopped.
Money shark.
Money shark.
Another.
Then another.
The blue Orbs spread across the first four reels.
I counted.
Seven.
Reel five slowed.
FRENZY.
Plain Collect.
No multiplier.
No +1 Spin.
Just the shark that meant everyone else could finally be gathered.
The values on the seven Money symbols were mostly small.
1x.
1x.
2x.
2x.
3x.
3x.
5x.
€17.00 altogether at the €1.00 base bet underneath the Ante configuration.
The Collect pulled them in.
The Free Spins opened.
Five spins.
The first one began with the Money sharks reset to something much simpler.
Any Money symbol appearing now started at 1x.
The important part was what happened later.
Their values climbed automatically with each consecutive Free Spin.
The sharks were about to become more expensive because time was passing.
No additional teeth required.
First Free Spin.
Two Money sharks.
1x each.
Reel five supplied FRENZY.
Collected.
€2.00.
Good.
The cheapest possible sharks had been caught immediately.
Four spins left.
Second Free Spin.
Three Money sharks landed.
Now they were worth 2x each.
€6.00 sitting in blue Orbs.
Reel five stopped.
No Collect.
Nothing gathered.
The sharks disappeared.
Already the species had doubled in value and reel five had stopped paying attention.
Third Free Spin.
Money shark.
3x.
Only one.
Reel five produced a x2 Collect.
There.
The 3x shark was gathered.
Doubled.
€6.00.
The collector had finally arrived with a multiplier and found exactly one shark.
That felt appropriate.
Give reel five the useful equipment.
Reduce the available wildlife.
Two spins left.
Fourth Free Spin.
The Money sharks had now reached 5x.
Two landed.
€10.00 in total.
Reel five stopped on +1 SPIN.
Collected.
€10.00 paid.
And another Free Spin was added.
That was better.
The +1 shark had managed to catch both valuable sharks and extend the dive.
Two spins remained again.
The next step in the Money ladder was 10x.
Fifth Free Spin.
One Money shark.
Then another.
Third.
Fourth.
Four of them.
All worth 10x the base bet.
€40.00 sitting across the first four reels.
This was comfortably the largest collection of Money values the feature had shown.
Reel five spun.
I watched only that column.
FRENZY would do.
x2 would be excellent.
x3 would be ridiculous.
+1 SPIN could keep the escalation moving.
The reel stopped.
No Collect.
Four 10x sharks remained on screen for a moment.
Forty euros worth of underwater teeth.
Nobody came to collect them.
They disappeared.
One Free Spin left.
This feature had started with 1x sharks.
The cheap ones had been gathered.
At 3x, one got gathered.
At 5x, two got gathered.
At 10x, the sea finally produced a proper school of Money sharks and reel five sent nobody.
The sixth spin began.
Because of the +1 SPIN earlier, the shark value had climbed again.
15x.
One Money shark landed on reel three.
Fifteen times.
Same shark face.
Same blue Orb.
Same teeth.
It had not grown.
It had not defeated another shark.
It had not found treasure.
This was simply the sixth Free Spin, so Deep Sea Frenzy had declared it fifteen times more important than the sharks from the beginning.
Reel five spun.
The 15x shark waited.
An ordinary symbol landed.
No Collect.
€0.00.
The feature ended.
That was magnificent.
The Money sharks had evolved from 1x to 15x over six spins.
The expensive part of the food chain had arrived exactly when the collecting sharks became unavailable.
The Free Spins themselves paid €18.00.
Add the €17.00 collected on the trigger and the entire underwater operation had recovered €35.00.
My balance returned at €93.40.
I turned the Ante off.
Back to €1.00.
Seven sharks had already got their chance.
I did not need to pay extra to watch them organize another meeting.
One ordinary spin.
The reels stopped.
Green shark.
Green shark.
Wild helping in the middle.
Another green shark on the far side.
A proper line.
€6.40.
Balance: €98.80.
That was where I stopped.
The normal shark had no Orb.
No 15x.
No collector waiting on reel five.
No scheduled increase in value.
It simply knew two other sharks.
After an entire feature spent watching Money sharks become progressively more valuable while the correct collector repeatedly missed them, the most useful predator on the screen was back to being an ordinary green one.
Deep Sea Frenzy had taken me from €100.00 to €98.80 through seven glowing sharks, an Ante Bet, six Free Spins, a +1 SPIN collector and one completely unpaid 15x shark.
The treasure chest remained open on the sea floor.
The sailing ship remained upright.
The ordinary shark line was still sitting in the last result.
The expensive sharks were gone.
Apparently the ocean had finally remembered that teeth work without numbers too.
The only thing progressive in Era of Jinlong is my existential crisis.