Totem Link

Totem Link: Slot Overview

According to certain online sources, a totem is an animal or object believed to have a deeper spiritual significance, and also that some Native American traditions say each person is linked to nine different animals, guiding them through life. It might be tempting to shrug things like this off when brought up in a culture heavily influenced by science. However, let's take a moment to untether our minds and imagine that we do have nine guides, lighting the way through life, clearing third eyes blotted out by modernity's psychic ink.

And with that, we move to Totem Link, an online slot from developer Blue Guru Games. In this slot, players are led into a mystical representation of Native American culture. Not overly mystical, though, Totem Link spends much of the time with its feet planted on the ground. The setting for one is pretty realistic, depicting a group of teepees camped out on the ground before a snowy mountain range. It's more realistic looking than some of these Native American/North American themes slots can sometimes be and has a feel similar to Print Studio's Huntress Wild Vengeance. Totem Link certainly makes a departure from the fantastical imagery Blue Guru Games often uses, Clash of Seraphim or Octopus Armada being two examples from the opposite edge of the scale. All in all, it's a detailed scene that set the mood quite well.

Totem Link is playable on any device and takes bets of 20 p/c to $/€200 per spin. It operates with a highly volatile math model, powering out a return to player value of 95.23%, which stays the same whether buying one of the bonus games or not. The active game panel consists of 5-reels, 3-rows, and 40 paylines, set within a lashed wooden structure, where wins are created when at least three matching symbols land on consecutive reels across a payline, beginning from the left-hand side.

If animals do guide us through this life, then five possible guides appear as the high pay symbols. They are lynxes, wolves, bears, eagles, and bison, while below them in value are 10-A card rank tiles. Landing a full, five-of-a-kind winning line gets you 2-5x the bet for the card symbols or 10-50 times the stake for five premiums. Totem Link uses a dual wild/scatter symbol which performs both functions like the book in a 'Book of' slot. Here it appears as a sort of totem icon, and as the wild, it substitutes for any of the regular paying symbols.

Totem Link: Slot Features

For features, Totem Link uses a fairly familiar bunch of extras for the most part, with some adjustments made to give them a sheen of novelty. These are Free Games with Wild Reels and a Spinning Totem Game.

Free Games with Wilds Reels

Landing 3 of the wild/scatter symbols triggers Free Games with Wild Reels. During it, reels 2, 3, and 4 can turn into Wild Reels, substituting for any pay symbol. At least 1 Wild Reel will appear on each free spin. Totem symbols do not appear during free games, however.

Spinning Totem Game

Totem Symbols display cash values and are your ticket to the Spinning Totem Game. The feature triggers when at least 8 Totem Symbols land in view during the base game. The feature starts with 3 spins, and when Totem Symbols hit, they pay their values, lock in place and reset the spin count back to 3. When a reel is filled with Totem Symbols, they are removed, making space for new ones to land. The reel is also upgraded to a higher tier, up to 3 at the most, meaning Totems may land on it with better prizes. Lights above the reel indicate its tier. If all reels are upgraded, then players have a chance of winning a Jackpot. The three Jackpots are the Minor, Major, and Mega, worth 50x, 500x, or 5,000x the bet, respectively. Jackpot prizes are also dependent on the reel's tier. So, tiers 1, 2, or 3 have the chance of awarding the Minor, Major, or Mega Jackpot, respectively.

Feature Buy

If the green and gold Buy Bonus button is on the screen, clicking it allows players to buy one of the bonus games. Here you can get access to 10 free games for 60x the bet, or the Spinning Totem Game for 120x the bet.

Totem Link: Slot Verdict

To date, Blue Guru Games has shown a tendency to bounce between far-out themes, encompassing such ideas as gods, myths, and aliens, to more grounded topics like fishing. Totem Link skirts the middle ground, exploring a mystical side of Native American culture while placing it in a down-to-earth scenario of mountains, plains, and physical animals you could touch. For the most part, it's quite enjoyable. It doesn't have the level of violence on display in Little Bighorn or the ripples of revenge in Huntress Wild Vengeance. Instead, Totem Link displays a more relaxed, peaceful side of the theme, preferring to commune with the spirits rather than shoot bears or remove scalps.

When Totem Link does wind up, through its features, it does so in a way that is mostly familiar, with a few alterations on the sides. Full reel wilds in free spins, for example, are fairly common, but the artwork and animations spruce the effect up. Likewise, the Spinning Totem Game, a run-of-the-mill hold 'n win game largely, yet with tier upgrades potentially leading to bigger prizes or even Jackpots accessed in a different way than usual. Not exactly major innovations, and there are no non-Jackpot special symbols to look out for, which might flip a bonus round on its head. Yet, the novel bits are such that hold 'n win completists might be tempted in for a go. As for winning potential, the 5,000x Mega Jackpot would tend to be the focal point, though Totem Link did achieve a higher value of 6,344x the bet during simulated game rounds.

When the dust settled over the prairie, Totem Link supplied a satisfying series of events. It doesn't try to reinvent the hold 'n win wheel or do anything revolutionary during free spins, but it has been neatly put together and showcases an interesting interpretation of a side of Native American culture in an attractive way.