Sabertooth (WMS): Overview

For a long time, people assumed sabertooth tigers vanished well before humans ever appeared. More recently, researchers have found clues indicating that some of these predators may have still been alive when our earliest ancestors were first learning to walk upright. It’s a chilling idea that still captures the imagination. So picture a slot packed with peril, the rush of the chase, raw instinct, and the overwhelming strength of the natural world. Then take all of that intensity away, and what you’re left with is the Sabertooth slot.

At a glance, it starts off promising. The scenery is vibrant and green, and the 5 reels and 4 rows are filled with nicely illustrated icons. Choose a stake from 50 p/c and $/€500 and press spin. That’s when the experience begins to feel ancient—in the worst way—thanks to painfully slow reel animation. Turbo spins would have been a great way to curb the impatience that quickly sets in. There’s a small tune while the reels are turning, but beyond that the game is largely quiet. Visually and in overall feel, Sabertooth immediately resembles a land-based slot machine, which makes sense because Sabertooth is a remake of a physical slot from WMS’s extensive back catalogue.

While the artwork on the symbols is solid, the payouts are underwhelming. Your wager is split across the 50 paylines and wins are worked out using the line bet. The lowest tier includes pears, plums, oranges, and cherries paying up to 2x the line bet. In the middle are watermelons, spearheads, and necklaces for 0.2 – 2x the line bet. The higher-value set is the rodent, dodo, rhino, and mammoth for 0.3 – 10x the line bet. Put simply, it’s not exactly a lineup that wins you over.

That initial impatience soon becomes frustration when you factor in the disappointing RTP of 95.92% alongside medium volatility. Getting anywhere close to Sabertooth’s top prize effectively means playing at maximum stake, but at $/€500 per spin, that’s beyond what most players will want—or be able—to risk.

Sabertooth (WMS): Features

To really get anything out of the gameplay, you’ll want the Sabertooth character showing up as often as possible. He’s represented by two symbols:

• Sabertooth tiger face symbol – appears on the first reel as a wild which can sub for any symbol except the scatter.
• The full-body sabertooth tiger symbol – appears on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5 subs for the pay symbols.

If the Face Wild lands on reel 1 and body wilds appear on any of the other reels, the Sabertooth Nudge Bonus kicks in with a slashing animation. Any reel (or reels) containing a body wild then shifts so that the entire reel turns wild.

The campfire icon acts as the scatter and can land anywhere on the gird. When 3 or more appear on adjacent reels starting from reel 1, they award 8 Free Spins and also pay between 2x and 50x the total bet. In free spins, the backdrop and symbols switch into Ice Age mode, although their payout values stay unchanged. While this feature is running, you can unlock 8 additional free spins using the same trigger method described above.

Sabertooth (WMS): Verdict

WMS is a long-standing slot provider that has produced a handful of genuinely distinctive titles over the years. Unfortunately, Sabertooth isn’t one of them. If you’re after a nature-themed slot from WMS, the classic Raging Rhino, or the more recently released Raging Rhino Megaways with its 10,000x+ top prize, is a much more appealing choice than Sabertooth.

Sabertooth’s biggest issues are its sluggish pace, a comparatively steep minimum bet (which will put off most low-rollers), the flat medium variance gameplay, and the low RTP. The top prize of 500x comes from hitting a full screen of wilds or mammoth’s, but even that is likely to be difficult to achieve. And given how slowly the game runs, we may be well on our way to the next ice age before it finally happens.

So what’s the reason to play when stronger alternatives exist? Beyond the theoretical jackpot, prehistory fans or nature enthusiasts might want to give it a go, but there isn’t much else to recommend it. Perhaps it will appeal to players who like the idea of recreating the land-based version at home? Yes, that’s scraping the barrel. The reality is that Sabertooth theme slots may be uncommon, but other games have handled the concept far better. In fact, you could argue that Sabretooth is little more than an irritating copy of Quickspin’s Razortooth.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the single thing that makes Sabertooth feel so lifeless. The game lacks spark and energy, and there’s no x-factor that makes you want to keep pressing spin or any real sense of anticipation when you do. Sabertooth Tigers are supposed to be massive, furious predators that hunted and terrified their prey. It’s a pity that more of that tension and ferocity wasn’t brought into Sabertooth the slot.