Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes: Slot Overview

If you’ve ever been curious what the Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom crews do when they’re not building online slots, you could imagine them dusting off old board games and getting competitive. Maybe that’s not the case, but with Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes being the second Snakes & Ladders slot to come out, it’s easy to see why the idea pops up. After all, people have been rolling dice, shifting pieces across boards, climbing ladders, and sliding down snakes for centuries. The earliest version is often linked to Moksha Patam, created in ancient India to, among other things, illustrate the ideas of Moksha and Karma.

For anyone wondering, Moksha is the liberation of the soul from the Wheel of Samsara—better known as the cycle of birth and death—leading to a state of endless bliss. That’s a lot of philosophy for a pastime that’s now basically a dash to the last square, where ladders propel you forward and snakes knock you back. Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes keeps things more down-to-earth than spiritual and brings the classic board game into play when the bonus round kicks in. Until then, gameplay runs on a 5×3 grid with 10 paylines for forming winning lines. Like the previous title, Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes is set outdoors near a waterfall, though the higher pixel count has softened the jagged edges. It still carries a slightly old-school vibe, but it’s far less 8-Bit than before.

On the numbers side, a few details have shifted while others are unchanged. One figure that has moved in the wrong direction is RTP, which drops to a top value of 96.08%. Volatility stays the same with its high rating (5 out of 5), and the potential is unchanged too. To play, you choose a stake from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin, and the game is built to run smoothly on any device for some Snakes & Ladders-style fun.

Before the board appears for the bonus, wins are paid when at least three identical symbols land on consecutive reels along a payline, starting from the leftmost reel. There are nine paying symbols in total, split between 10-A card royals and higher-value icons like eyes peeking from baskets, snakes, bananas, and gorillas. A five-symbol line returns 5-10 times the bet for the card ranks and 15 to 50 times the stake for the premium symbols. Next up are Wild Dice symbols, which can land on all reels and substitute for any regular pay symbol. When Wild Dice appear, they display 1, 2, or 3 dots, corresponding to multipliers of x1, x2, or x3, applied to the spin’s total win. If Wild Dice form winning combinations on their own, a five-of-a-kind awards 50 times the bet.

Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes: Slot Features

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols activates the Snakes & Ladders Board Bonus and awards 12, 14, or 16 dice rolls, respectively. If the bonus is triggered with 4 or 5 scatters, there’s a chance one of them becomes a Snake Bonus symbol, granting 2 extra dice rolls. The bonus takes place on a 12×12-sized board containing 144 squares. Players are represented by a monkey token and start on square one. At the beginning, random items are distributed across the board, including bet multipliers from 4x to 100x, total win multipliers, ladders, snakes, and bananas. From there, 2 dice are rolled per turn until the awarded rolls are used, moving the token around the board. If a 1-1 is rolled, +1 additional roll is awarded. Landing on a square with an item triggers its effect:

• Money – adds the bet multiplier displayed to the total win value.
• Multiplier – a value that multipliers the total win value collected so far.
• Ladder – landing at the bottom of a ladder moves players to the square at the top of the ladder.
• Snake – landing on the snake’s head moves players to the square at the tip of its tail.
• Banana – adds random money values to the board while all other bananas are removed.
• Final position – landing here awards 1,000x the bet.

Randomly, a square can also contain a hidden rope charmer; landing on it sends the monkey to a random higher spot on the board. The feature ends when there are no rolls remaining, or when the player reaches square 144. At that point, the accumulated total is paid out. In addition, the bonus round includes a minimum win of 20x the bet. If the final total falls below this amount, the monkey enters Rage Mode and charges to the end of the board, collecting all values and multipliers along the route. The combined multiplier total is then applied to the final payout. During Rage Mode, the monkey ignores ladders, snakes, bananas, and rope charmers.

Once the monkey reaches square 144, the round ends, though a retrigger can occur. Two dice are rolled, and if they land as a double (1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, or 6-6), the bonus is retriggered with the same number of starting rolls. Also, whenever any double is rolled during the round, a segment of the snake above the reels is filled. When all four segments are filled, one bonus retrigger is awarded.

Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes: Slot Verdict

It’s hard to say exactly what pushed Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom to make Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes. If it had been a major departure from the original, the reason might be clearer. Still, it’s possible the studios took on board comments about Snakes & Ladders Megadice and produced a follow-up with tweaked rules and a refreshed presentation. Was Snakes & Ladder Megadice popular enough to justify a lightly reworked sequel? It may be difficult to picture, but here we are—however we ended up at this point.

There isn’t much to add that wasn’t already covered in the earlier Snakes & Ladders review. The visuals have been updated—if that’s the best way to put it—or at least the blocky 8-Bit style has been removed, giving the game a cleaner finish than many Pragmatic Play/Reel Kingdom collaborations. What else is different? The mechanic where wild dice dots fill snake segments to trigger the bonus has been adjusted so it now shows up within the bonus itself. And the skyscraper has been swapped out for a rope charmer. Beyond those changes, it’s essentially the same Snakes and Ladders gambling-style experience as before, and even the max win remains the same at 5,300x the bet.

Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes would feel less strange if the developers had added more clearly fresh elements during development. The improved visuals will likely appeal to players who weren’t keen on the previous game’s retro approach, but aside from that, Snakes & Ladders Snake Eyes offers largely the same type of gameplay as its predecessor.