Rise of the Sabertooth: Slot Overview

Stick with slots for long enough and, sooner or later, something is bound to start rising. Rise of Samurai (more than once), Rise of Olympus 100, even Rise of the Mountain King, to name just a few. This time, it’s a prehistoric cat getting the spotlight, and it’s anyone’s guess what it plans to do: conquer everything, dominate its territory, evolve opposable thumbs and take over the food chain, or something entirely different. The creature in question is one of the most fang-filled felines ever to roam the earth, starring in software provider iSoftBet’s online slot Rise of the Sabertooth.

The base game of Rise of the Sabertooth is set against a rugged, rocky backdrop scattered with bones plus bows and arrows. The animal symbols are also splashed with war paint, as if they’re gearing up for a showdown, yet the overall tone leans more toward playful, cartoon-style fun than anything grim or violent. Think closer to The Croods or Ice Age as a movie comparison.

On the wagering front, players can set their bet anywhere from 20 c to $/€20 per spin, and there are two bonus buy choices available. The maths sit on the medium-high volatile end, with RTP landing in the 96% region. All the action plays out on a 5×4 gaming grid where 20 paylines pay when matching symbols appear consecutively starting from the leftmost reel.

At the foot of the paytable’s Payouts section are the 10 to A card royals, which return 2 to 2.5 times the bet for a 5 OAK win line. Above them come the premium animals: a wolf, a woolly mammoth, a crocodile, and a sabertooth tiger. A line of 5 matching premium symbols pays 5 to 20 times the stake. Rise of the Sabertooth includes standard wilds as well as stacked wilds, and both can substitute for any regular paying symbol. Another key icon is the mystery symbol, which transforms into any paid symbol when it lands. A win made up only of wilds pays as the top-paying symbol.

Rise of the Sabertooth: Slot Features

If anything is going to “rise” in Rise of the Sabertooth, it’s most likely through the feature set – Super Sabertooth Spins, free spins, super free spins, and bonus buys.

Super Sabertooth Spins

Super Sabertooth Spins activate whenever a super symbol appears. To begin, the super symbol expands into a full reel wild and can reveal an x2 or x3 multiplier. During free spins, that multiplier is guaranteed. Multipliers apply to any wins first, and then the super spins kick in. The stacked wild moves left one reel, and any fresh wins are multiplied. If another stacked wild lands in view, its multiplier is added to the overall multiplier, and the sequence continues. Once the Stacked Wilds have shifted off the leftmost reel, Super Sabertooth Spins finish. In effect, Super Sabertooth Spins function as free respins.

Free Spins

Landing 3 or 4 scatter symbols awards 6 or 8 free spins, respectively. In free spins, stacked wilds are guaranteed to reveal at least an x2 multiplier and trigger respins until the stacked wilds have spun off the leftmost reel. Respins don’t reduce the free spins counter. Free spins cannot be retriggered.

Super Free Spins

Landing 5 scatter symbols in the base game triggers 10 super free spins. Here, any stacked wild is guaranteed to reveal at least an x2 multiplier. Any multipliers triggered in super free spins remain persistent for the entire feature and can be improved by landing another stacked wild. Stacked wild multipliers are additive. This feature also cannot be retriggered.

Bonus Buy

With the bonus buy, players can purchase 6-8 free spins for 80 times the stake or 10 super free spins for 200x the stake.

Rise of the Sabertooth: Slot Verdict

Britannica notes that sabertooth cats lived from 56 million to 11,700 years ago, which is a staggering stretch of time when you stop to consider it. Our ancestors have existed for roughly 6 million years, yet modern humans have only been around for a small slice of that—about 200,000 years—and look how quickly we’ve managed to make a mess of things. Do we really think we can keep going for another 50 million years like our sabertoothed counterparts? It’s difficult to imagine how our current pace of consumption could last anywhere near that long. Either a huge change in how we think and live will be needed, or some massive catastrophe will force a reset—or worse. People talk about the human spirit, sure, but what are we next to the immense forces moving through the vast, cold universe?

Still, until then, there are slots like Rise of the Sabertooth to fill a bit of downtime. In play, it offered a tidy prehistoric diversion. The presentation is bright, with extinct animals wearing war paint on the reels, looking ready to scrap for supremacy. Super Sabertooth Spins add extra spark to the base game thanks to their wandering stacked wild behaviour, and win-boosting modifiers are rarely unwelcome. Released around the same period, Backseat Gaming’s The Cursed King arguably handled the concept more strongly, pairing full reel wilds with multipliers reaching x100. In Backseat’s title, though, wild stacks only wandered during free spins, while here they can roam at any time—whether that’s the deciding factor or not.

Nothing in Rise of the Sabertooth felt like an obvious deal-breaker. On the other hand, it didn’t deliver a session that really stuck in the mind either. So it lands as a decent enough entry: not amazing, not awful—simply a playable prehistoric slot featuring roaming full stack wilds that may carry multipliers. That’s essentially the sum of it.