It’s cold outside, sporadically snowy, and a bit windy – the perfect type of weather for some special, Christmas ice picking! All you have to do to join the fun is grab your computer, sit back and visit your preferred Rival Gaming casino. There you’ll find all you need to enjoy “Ice Picks” – Rival’s brand new release that takes you to an adventurous world which hides precious gems and some hefty prizes.

“Ice Picks” is a five-reel, 20-payline video slot inspired by both wintertime and mountaineering. It is set in the beautiful, frozen Himalayas where a treasure hunter seeks to find hidden treasures in a secret frozen cavern. On his way to riches and wealth, he uses a lot of climbing gear, such as a helmet, boots, goggles, wooden crate, and a compass, and picking through the ice treasures, he finds some old skeletons, lots of tools, statues, a treasure chest, etc. All of these appear during the base game, but it’s worth remembering that there are also numerous special features appearing in the game: a wild and scatter symbol, the Ice Picks Bonus Round, as well as free spins with multipliers and the always welcome Ice Drop feature.

In addition to its great offering, “Ice Picks” also allows all types of players to enjoy its charms – the slot features a somewhat modest range of coin denominations (from 1 cent to $0.25), but it compensates for this with the possibility to place up to 10 coins per payline and thus increase the range. In return for your bet amount, you can win quite a decent sum from time to time, especially in the bonus round (the base game is not overly generous in general).

Special Features:

As mentioned before, the biggest prizes in “Ice Picks” can be won on its special features, as they hide a multitude of winning possibilities. Namely, the slot features a wild symbol which appears on reels 1, 3 and 5, and serves to replace other regular symbols in order to create more winning opportunities. The only problem is that it does not appear that often, probably thanks to the fact that it does not appear on all reels. In addition, when you hit 3 or more Map icons, you’ll see the start of the Ice Pick bonus round, in which you’ll need to use your pickaxe to crack open the ice and release the gems trapped inside for cash prizes. This feature is really worth hoping for because it contains some excellent prizes, and it appears pretty regularly.

Also, there are scattered compasses three, four or five of which will start a round of five, 10 or 25 free spins, respectively. During the free spins, all prizes will be tripled, but even so, these rounds are sometimes not very generous. Finally, when you hit a line of three or more frozen icons, they will pay out and then shatter in a line to make room for other symbols to drop and take their places, thus creating multi-win sequences.

All in all, “Ice Picks” is a great new release, which has a lot to offer – it has great graphics and adequate sounds (which become tiresome after some time, though), there are some nice prizes to be won, so we believe this Rival title will attract many a player to its secret treasures!

- reviewed by Latest Casino Bonuses, last updated 2012-10-04