Dolphin Coast: Introduction

It’s unclear exactly when Dolphin Coast originally launched (it’s an older title) or when it was removed, but it seems to have been available up until 2016. The reason it vanished isn’t known – and since it isn’t a branded slot, expired licenses wouldn’t have been the cause, which is otherwise a common explanation for withdrawn games (South Park by NetEnt is a good example). It may simply have underperformed and gradually lost players due to weak returns, but whatever the explanation, it has now made a comeback.

Dolphin Coast is a 5-reel, 5-row online slot offering 3,125 ways to win, so wins aren’t tied to fixed paylines. The minimum bet is €0.50, and the maximum stake is kept fairly modest at just €10. As is often the case with Microgaming, we couldn’t find any official RTP details for the game. Historical information does show that the original release had an RTP of 96.4%.

With a static deep-blue ocean background and calming music accompanying the reel spins, it’s hard not to notice that Dolphin Coast feels dated in terms of presentation. The dolphin theme has also been used countless times across slots, to the point of being a bit overdone. Still, visuals matter less if the game can deliver strong wins, which brings us to the next section of the review…

Dolphin Coast: Symbols & Paytable

The game includes 11 regular symbols in total, not counting the Scatter, Wild, and Bonus symbols. Low-paying icons are the standard 10, J, Q, K and A, while the premiums are different sea creatures: starfish, seahorse, stripe fish, jellyfish, tasty orange fish, and sea turtle. The sea turtle is the top regular symbol, paying 5 times the stake for 5 across a full payline.

The Wild is a dolphin and shows up stacked on reels 2 and 4 in the base game. Regular symbols don’t stack in the main game, which is why payouts tend to be small unless you get a fortunate boost from the Wild Dolphin Bonus, which takes us to the third part of our review…

The Wild Dolphin Bonus activates when, on a winning spin, the Dolphin Coast symbol lands on the middle reel in the base game. Once triggered, you choose one of three dolphins to receive a 2x, 3x or 4x multiplier applied to the original win. This makes it possible to win up to 1600 times the stake in a single spin in the main game. The Wild Dolphin Bonus cannot be triggered in the free spins mode.

Dolphin Coast: Free Spins

Reaching free spins on any high variance slot can take some work, but the upside can be substantial. If you do unlock the free spins round here, you’ll have a shot at a huge top prize of 15,625 times the stake. To get there, you must land 3, 4 or 5 Scatter symbols anywhere on the reels, awarding 15, 20 or 25 free spins respectively (can be re-triggered).

In free spins, all premium symbols become stacked on the reels (while wilds appear only as single symbols), and if you hit a full screen of sea turtles, with or without wilds, you’ll achieve the maximum win. That’s essentially the entire free spins feature: clean and uncomplicated, very much classic old-school Microgaming.

Dolphin Coast: Conclusion

The maximum win potential is undeniably strong, even surpassing Immortal Romance on that front, one of Microgaming’s most famous ultra high potential slots ever. That said, considering how long the game has existed, there is a worrying lack of big win videos and screenshots to support the stated mega potential. It’s an extremely high variance slot, so we wouldn’t expect massive hits to appear constantly, but surely we’d see something above 6,000x at least?

Perhaps the market is simply more ready for a game like this now. Ultra high potential, high variance slots are in demand, and we have no doubt there will be plenty of players out there chasing them dolphins.

The release date is unknown at this point. We’ll update the article when we know more.