One of the reasons for the existence of the Microgaming Partners program is to showcase other developers and their innovations. This has been a bit and miss over the years, but it’s also been very interesting and, in many cases, a lot of fun. One of the pieces of innovation comes from Northern Lights Gaming in the shape of the titular Timelines mechanic. This feature allows players to pull back symbols from previous spins. This all sounds great in theory, but how well does it work in practice? Well, there’s only one way to find out – join us and take the slot for a spin in this Timelines review.

You can spin the reels of the Timelines slot at our recommended top-rated online casinos.

As you could have probably guessed from its name, the Timelines slot has a time-travel, sci-fi-like feel to it. The reels and symbols are kept simple, with the background of the slot looking like something you might expect to see on a Dr Who poster or DVD cover. There is nothing particularly eye-catching about it, but it fits the theme of the slot nicely. The game screen itself does appear a little busy when you first load it up, but it all makes sense fairly quickly after a quick read-through of the paytable.

As we mentioned in the last section, the game screen can look a little bit busy when you first load up the Timelines slot. There are five reels and three rows, with the slot offering 243 different ways to win on each spin. Above the reels, players will spot five mini-reels, which is something we will come to later, and underneath them, there is another little bonus meter. All of this concerns the bonus features and shouldn’t distract from the main game. The coin icon allows players to change their stake, with a minimum of $0.10 and a maximum of $25 being available.

Northern Lights Studio has developed the Timelines slot using HTML5, ensuring that it works on a range of different mobile devices. This includes both Android and iOS operating systems, as well as a range of different mobile browsers. The game screen is further condensed and does feel a little crowded, but everything still plays the same. Most new slot sites will now support mobile play, so players should have no issue accessing this.

The unique selling point of this slot is the titular Timelines mechanic. Remember the five little reels we mentioned earlier? That is where these come into play. Every reel spin is snapshotted by the game and stored above the reels, with the previous five spins all being displayed. If a Clock Symbol lands on the reels, it can pull back any symbol from one of the previous five spins and add it to the reels. While this does not guarantee a winning combination, it can boost the chances of one or help to boost another bonus feature.

The second meter underneath the snapshots is the Epic Strike. It rewards multipliers for landing Epic Strike symbols. At this point, it feels like each member of the Microgaming Partner program, following the success of 9 Masks of Fire, has to use this bonus at least once. The maximum win here is 4,000x the player’s stake with 10 symbols collected.

Finally, landing three Wormhole Scatter symbols triggers the Timelines Free Spins bonus. For this, the number of Timelines bonuses is increased and there are more multipliers added to the reels.

The Timelines online slot game has an RTP of 96.17%. The slot is deemed as medium on the volatility scale, which could turn away players who really like chasing big wins. That said, the slot offers a maximum win of 9,500x the overall stake, which is certainly not a bad amount.

The Timelines mechanic doesn’t quite create the winning free-for-all you’d like to see, it’s still a novel concept and one that could catch on if it is tweaked over time. The other slot bonuses are all fine, with the 9 Masks of Fire-inspired Epic Strike bonus providing most of the big potential wins in the slot. From a visual perspective, the slot could certainly do with a lick of paint and a tidy-up, but if this doesn’t bother you too much, you could do worse than Timelines.