Design & Symbols

Snake Arena has a modern, blocky, cartoon design which is set within the walls of a Medieval castle, deep in a hidden forest surrounded by evergreen trees. The reels are comprised of stone paving slabs which make up the courtyard inside the castle. The player has an aerial view of proceedings. Fires burn brightly within the hexagonal turrets at the corners of the castle walls. The soundtrack which accompanies play is typical of the genre. 

Low value symbols are silver, blue, bronze, and gold coins. High value symbols are a frothy, wooden tankard of ale, a big ham on the bone with a dagger through the centre, a golden ring with a dragon eye gem, and a bejewelled crown.  The crown is the most valuable, with 5 across a payline worth 20x the bet size. The other two symbols are the knight and the dragon are both wild. The dragon only appear on reel 1 in the base game but can cover any amount of spaces. The knight can appear on any other reel, occupying just a standard symbol space.  The knight and the dragon also appear together to activate both the base and bonus game features.

 Special Features

• Wild Chase
• Free Spins

Wild Chase 

Wild Chase occurs randomly during the base game. The snake peeks out from above a random reel and the Knight peeks out from below a random reel. If both the peek out from the same reel it becomes fully wild and the process repeats. If the snake and Knight don’t appear on the same reel after 3 attempts, then Wild Chase ends. It is possible to make all reels fully wild. 

Free Spins

When a snake appears on reel 1 and a knight appears on any other reel the free spins feature is activated. There is no set number of free spins, the round end when the snake, which travels around the board in pursuit of the Knight, eventually crashes into itself. The format more or less follows that of the standard ‘Snake’ style game, although rather than swallowing dots on a Nokia 3310 this snake takes the shortest possible route (moving up and down and left to right) towards the Knight, which appears someone on reels 2-5 on each free spin. When the snake is within one space of the knight, its head and neck extend to goggle him up. Each extension of the neck makes the snake longer which makes it more likely to cross its own path. However, the longer the snake, the more wilds are on screen and as the spins rack up, so do the bigger wins. If the snake manages to grow to fill reels 2-5 without crashing into itself the 1,000x jackpot is awarded (along with any winnings made along the way), and the bonus round ends.

Our Thoughts on Snake Arena

I found Snake Arena to be an enjoyable game to play, although I’m not sure how much of this was due to a general fondness and sentimentality towards a game I spent countless hours playing in my youth. The base game, it has to be said, can get a little tedious. The wins aren’t terribly big, and the wait for the bonus game can be rather trying. With a 5x5 grid like this, I’m much more used to a cluster win mechanic, and the 30 paylines seemed a little dull. Also, I’m not sure a game with a maximum payout of less than 3,000 the bet size will attract too many high variance players these days? However, on the plus side, although the super-mega wins we’re used to seeing advertised aren’t on offer, most of the times I played the bonus round the wins were very pleasing indeed. The game is also very engaging and certainly can be a lot of fun. 

This is a game which really suits the ‘buy a bonus’ feature and this may be where Relax is hoping to win over the serious players. We might say it a lot, but this really is game which is all about the bonus buy slot category, and a short-cut to it could be welcomed with open arms.