Creature from the Black Lagoon

The epic 1954  blockbuster movie from Universal Studios has been immortalized on the slot from NetEnt. Creature from the Black Lagoon was filmed in 3D, evolving around an expedition on the riverboat “Rita” to the Amazon region where scientists discover a species of an amphibious Gill-man. They fail to capture the creature and instead he abducts Kay, the female lead in the movie played by the late Julie Adams.

In 2013, NetEnt took on the challenge to bring the movie plot to a set of slot reels. The result is pretty spectacular with very authentic characters and a suspenseful gameplay that features sticky and spreading wilds with respins and a free spins round with three levels to beat the creature and rescue Kay. The bravest underwater reel warriors will be rewarded with wins exceeding 2,000 times their stake.

Slot Details

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a video slot with five reels, three rows and 20 fixed pay lines. Wins are awarded for three to five matching symbols on a line from left to right only. You can join the expedition into the deep Amazon on desktop or mobile from 0.20 to 100 credits per spin. The RTP of this high variance game is set at 96.46%.

The black lagoon is naturally the fitting background to the game window that has the look of an unfolded old piece of parchment paper. The characters from the movie feature prominently on the reels together with a variety of props such as binoculars and oxygen diving tanks. The original soundtrack and a few spoken lines from the movie have also been incorporated and combined with loud thumbs when wilds or scatters land on the reels.

The entire pay symbols set is taken straight from the movie set. At the low end, you will find knives, 8mm cameras, oxygen diving tanks and binoculars. Pays for a 5OAK range from 5x to 6.25x your stake. They are followed by Lucas, Carl, David and Kay. Hit five on a line to win 20x to 37.50x your bet. The slot logo is the wild symbol, performing the usual substitution duties. Having five land on line will also pay 37.50x your stake. Scatters are a free spin symbol with minimum three needed to trigger the bonus round.

Sticky Wilds and Respins

Any wild landing on the reels in the base game and free spins will turn into a sticky wild and award a respin after any potential wins are paid. The aim is to hit more wilds on the respin as they will also remain locked in position and will retrigger the feature until no new wilds land on a respin. Wins are evaluated after every respin and paid cumulatively after the feature ends.

The Creature of the Black Lagoon Free Spins

Three, four or five scatters in one spin will trigger 10, 15 and 20 free spins respectively. They cannot be retriggered as such but reaching level four during the round will award once an additional 10 free spins. The feature will start with the Gill-man abducting Kay and taking her to his underwater den. The aim is now to hit the creature with the harpoon sufficient times to unlock spreading wilds and ultimately free Kay.

A target symbol can land on reel five on any free spin. For every occurrence, you will get one shot at the creature. A health meter in the bottom right corner indicates your progress through the levels.

• Level 1 (default): you will benefit from the standard sticky wilds and respins.
• Level 2 – three hits: the sticky wilds turn into spreading wild, expanding one position to the left when any land and triggering as usual the respin feature.
• Level 3 – six hits: the spreading wilds will now expand by two positions to the left when they land and will also trigger the respin feature.
• Level 4 – nine hits: the game awards once 10 extra free spins

The game is quite volatile, so reaching level 3 is not happening too often and when it does, you will still need to hit sufficient sticky wilds to score mega wins with the expansion and the respin feature. However, the slot is capable of huge wins once it fires up and you get to level four as the 10 extra spins will almost guaranteed lead to a few triggers of the respin feature.

Final Verdict

NetEnt did a superb job in bringing the action and characters from the movie to a set of slot reels, which is not always an easy feat. Plus, they gave it a volatile math model, just like you would expect the creature to be, and mega win potential. We can only hope that NetEnt will upgrade the Flash version to HTML5 as otherwise the slot will disappear from casino lobbies by the end of 2019.

Update 17th January 2019: NetEnt released a HTML5 version of the game, making it available for play on virtually any desktop, tablet of mobile device.

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