Akiva: Claws of Power

Akiva: Claws of Power: Slot Overview

The African countryside has proven to be alluring once again, this time drawing in software provider Foxium to see what they can make of it. The result is Akiva: Claws of Power, an online slot that mixes several elements together into one hot, grassy brew of a game. Out here, in what's been called the cradle of humanity, players rub shoulders with not just a selection of wild animals but features such as a Link&Win, jackpots, an Akiva Sandstorm, Claws of Power, and free spins with merged reel big symbols.

Akiva: Claws of Power got off to a good start by not exactly displaying anything experienced players won't have seen before but having a look which is easy on the eye. Foxium's graphics team has painted a pretty scene, filling it with dry grass, high-limbed trees, and what looks like Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. The same can be said for the soundtrack, which is quite good in parts, upping the tempo during free spins, as well. Altogether, Akiva: Claws of Power comes across as rather pleasant without being extraordinarily unique.

Foxium are no stranger to making slots with big numbers. Check out Boom Pirates, with its jillion ways to win, or thereabouts, as a prime example. Akiva: Claws of Power is quite the opposite. It is a game that comes with no big numbers. The RTP is pretty average, in a good way, with a maximum value of 96.2%, though it can be found at three lower settings. In all versions, volatility is medium, while the hit rate is 28.28%. Taking on Akiva: Claws of Power can be achieved on any device, first picking a stake of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin.

Clicking the pay button sets the 5-reel, 3-row game grid in motion, where one of the main goals is landing winning combinations of three to five-of-a-kind. A total of 25 paylines are provided, and line wins must start on the leftmost side of the grid and land on adjacent reels. First up are four bright J-A card symbols, followed by an antelope, a zebra, a hippo, and Akiva as the four high pays. Landing a five-of-a-kind winning line pays 2-3x the bet for the low pays, 7.5 to 20 times the stake for the highs. Wilds, which appear on all reels, can help by substituting for all pay symbols. Hitting a five-wild winning line is worth 20x the bet.

Akiva: Claws of Power: Slot Features

Foxium hasn't exactly used Akiva: Claws of Power to showcase its considerable creativity in the features department. Instead, they've mostly stuck to tried and true methods such as a Link&Win round plus free spins with big symbols. Along with them are side features called Claws of Power and Akiva Sandstorm.

Akiva Sandstorm

This feature can trigger randomly on any spin. Akiva changes a number of symbols to create winning combinations on the reels.

Claws of Power

Similar to the previous extra, when Claws of Power triggers, claws swipe the reels, shuffling them to create winning combinations.

Free Spins

Landing 3 drum scatter symbols on reels 1, 3, and 5 triggers 5 free spins. For this round, reels 2, 3, and 4 merge together into one reel holding big symbols. Big symbols count as nine symbols, except big scatters, which count as one symbol. On a final note, free spins can be retriggered.

Link&Win

Landing at least 6 Coin symbols triggers the Link&Win feature. Here, 3 respins are awarded with all Coins held to the reels. Landing new Coins holds them, too, while resetting free spins to 3. Each Coin has either cash prizes of 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 10x, 12x, 15x, 16x, 18x, 20x, 30x, or 100x the bet, or the Mini or Mega jackpot worth 30x, and 100x the bet, respectively. The Link&Win ends when no respins are left, or all 15 positions are filled. If the grid is filled, the Mega jackpot worth 1,000x the bet is also awarded.

Akiva: Claws of Power: Slot Verdict

There is a stack of African wildlife slots stalking a line up near you, and it's not hard to see the allure. The raw majesty of nature, the cycle of birth, life, and competition, rolling on for countless aeons. Strip away our modern technology, and one wonders if we as a species could fight, claw, and survive our way to the top of the food chain again. It's powerful stuff. Less powerful is Akiva: Claws of Power, Foxium's contribution to the African nature slot genre. It looks a treat, but it's a bit like a doughnut. Once you've nibbled away at the outer parts, the inner is a bit hollow.

One reason is that the central features are a bit old hat, though the Claws of Power and Akiva Sandstorm are pretty neat. Merging middle reels to create big symbols is very Wolf Gold, or perhaps even earlier, and the Link&Win bonus round is bog standard. Don't expect any special symbols or special rules to get in the way of simply landing Coin symbols or not. Even cracking the game's max win is pretty so-so. Winning the Grand would obviously be better than being chased by an angry lion, but the maximum potential in Akiva: Claws of Power is a relatively low 2,500x the bet. With all the claws, slashing and so on going on, it feels like a paltry amount compared to much of what's out there.

Still, it's unlikely Foxium made Akiva: Claws of Power just for its health. There's a chance the studio had a specific player type in mind when the team made the game, who should be pretty a-okay with the sort of pleasant sensory experience and proven features Akiva: Claws of Power supplies. Out of this exclusive circle, though, there's a suspicion Akiva: Claws of Power might come across like a lion in captivity that looks majestic but has lost the will to assert the apex predator status it possessed out in the wild.