Africa X UP

Africa X UP sends players back to the African savannah courtesy of Microgaming partner Alchemy Gaming, running on a 5-reel, 3-row grid with 243 ways to win rather than fixed paylines. Rather than leaning purely on scenery, the game centres its identity around an X UP scatter-collection system: land X UP symbols and they build a multiplier meter to the side of the reels, which then gets unleashed once free spins are triggered - and players who've already stacked up scatters can buy into the free spins round at a reduced cost rather than paying full price cold.

Visually, the game trades the usual sunset-plains cliché for a dusty, tussock-grass landscape with acacia trees and distant mountains, backed by a soundtrack that leans into classic safari-movie territory. Ten pay symbols make up the paytable - five card-rank icons (10 through Ace) alongside buffalo, rhino, elephant, and a warrior/warrioress pair as the higher-value set. A five-symbol winning combination pays out 3.33x to 4.67x the stake for the animal and character icons. Wild symbols land anywhere on the grid and expand to fill their entire reel when they appear, substituting for any paying symbol and topping out at 50x the bet for five of a kind.

Africa X UP is rated high volatility, which fits the design - the game is built to hold back for the multiplier-boosted free spins rather than pay out evenly across the base game. Stakes run from 30p/c up to $/€37.50 per spin, and the headline number that'll draw attention is the max win of 30,000x the stake, a genuinely huge ceiling that puts this among the more ambitious slots in Alchemy Gaming's catalogue. RTP hasn't been published for this listing, so it's worth checking the in-game information screen on whichever site hosts it before locking in your bet size, since return-to-player figures can vary by operator on games like this.

Given the high volatility and that unconfirmed RTP, Africa X UP is best approached as a game for players who enjoy scatter-collection multiplier builds and don't mind some patience between bigger payouts. The 30,000x ceiling is the real draw here, and the free demo at johnessyslots is the sensible way to see how quickly that X UP meter fills before deciding whether to chase it with real money.