Great Bear Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Great Bear Review

This year's Global Gaming Expo was stacked with exciting fresh releases, and one of the newer content presented was the Great Bear slot from IGT that sports several unique features. Among those, players will find Symbol Upgrades, Multipliers, and Free Spins, which can bring wins of up to 2,500x the stake.

Great Bear - Slot Outlook

Great Bear takes place in the wild nature, and players will find themself amidst thick green woods where the 5x3 20-payline reel set is sitting. The outer look has never been IGT's strong suit, and it's the gameplay where the extra effort is made. The artwork provided looks kind of dated, though, the static background image is still fine, switching color whenever you hit bonus features. The soundtrack is also on spot since it captures the essential wildlife vibe and thus fits the gameplay perfectly. However, it's still a classic forest theme that Great Bear makes use of, and there's little originality involved indeed.

Great Bear Slot - Reel Screen

Playable on any device, the Great Bear slot comes with a betting range of €0.4 to €4,000 per spin, which should certainly appeal to even the riskiest of high-rollers, not to mention casual players. The volatility is in the medium range, while the long-term RTP varies between 89.02% and 96.07%.

The maximum win value is 2,500x the stake, and it pretty much matches the risk involved.

All symbols pay from The symbol collection is made up of 8 different regular animal symbols, including in ascending order fish, mice, rabbits, raccoons, owls, eagles, lynxes, and wolves, worth from 0.25x to 2x your bet. True to the title, the bear symbol is a top star here, paying 2.5x the stake for 5 instances on a win line. On top of that, it acts as Wild and substitutes for any other regular symbols to help you achieve payouts. Finally, bigger wins are possible with Multipliers that bear symbols can acquire during the bonus features, covered below.

Great Bear - Bonus Features

There's plenty of action going on in the Great Bear slot, including a set of features that can pop up randomly in the base game and the free games bonus. However, most wins come from the symbol upgrade feature, which is your key to success here.

The Symbol Climb feature is available on any win during both the base and the bonus games.

Whenever triggered, random winning symbols may upgrade to the next level according to the paytable. The feature trail is shown on the left, and all matching symbols keep upgrading until they either fail or reach the final Wild bear symbol. After the process is done, all wins are evaluated, and the upgrade ladder is reset.

In case symbols fail to upgrade, a Gift of the Bear feature may randomly occur to resume the interrupted level-up process and produce bigger winning opportunities. The feature is only available after at least two successful symbol upgrades that have not reached the Wild symbol.

If there's any 5-of-a-kind win in view, the Great Bear Multiplier may come into play at the end of any spin during the gameplay. All Wild symbols on the center reel will have a chance to upgrade and acquire a 2x Multiplier. Much like in the symbol upgrade feature, these symbols will try to upgrade through 2x, 3x, 5x, and 10x Multipliers until they fail or successfully upgrade to 10x. All winning combinations involving those symbols will be multiplied by the last achieved Wild Multiplier.

Landing 3 Scatter symbols anywhere on the three middle reels during the base game trigger the Great Bear Bonus. Players are awarded 5 Win Spins that decrement only after achieving a win.

During the bonus, all successful symbol upgrades persist, and the upgraded symbols are removed from the reels for the remainder of the feature. Unfortunately, there's no way you can retrigger the bonus game.

Great Bear - Slot Verdict

All up, Great Bear is an enjoyable slot with a lot for players to get stuck into. Once you get past the basic looks and take a peek under the hood, you'll quickly notice the gameplay is pretty engaging with all those random modifiers and multipliers. Most importantly, those are available not only during the bonus but in the base game also, which means that wins of up to 2,500x are always within reach. 

Pros

• Random symbol upgrades
• Wild Multipliers of up to 10x
• Free Spins with guaranteed wins

Cons

• Dated visuals