Golden Mane

To be very honest, I have yet to love any of NextGen's games so far, with only '300 Shields' coming into my favourite games list, but even so, the game doesn't get played regularly. Why? SImply because it's always damn blardy hard to win on 300 Shields, even for a small miserable win, that's why! Hehehe. So with this relatively new game, Golden Mane, I wasn't expecting much out of the game, as usual, but I had to give the game a few tries anyway.

This game is all about horses, and nothing else but about horses. The golden horse, or the Golden Mane, is the Wild symbol, and pays a decent 1500x the line bet, or 100x total bet, for getting 5 of them. Why only 100x and not 150x total bet for a 10-paylines game? That's because NextGen is probably 'cheating' us players with a minimum starting bet of 0.15 EUR instead of just 0.10 EUR! Why they have done this, is beyond my comprehension! That's not a lot of cents difference, no doubt, but that's a 50% difference in the bet amount! So, if you have lost 1000 EUR, for example, you have actually lost 500 EUR all for nothing!!! Now, is that a big difference, or is that a BIG difference?! Sheesh!

The Horseshoe is the Scatter/Bonus symbol, appearing only on reels 2, 3 and 4. Getting 3 Scatter symbols pays a very low 2x total bet, and awards 6 free spins. Getting 2 Scatter symbols pay an even lower 0.66x total bet, and awards only 2 free spins! So much for an interesting free spin feature, if you ask me! That's really insufficient to provide any good win! Moreover, the highest paying symbol, the White Horse, only pays 47x the total bet, with the other symbols having low win values. Nothing exciting at all!

During the free spins, each high symbol becomes an Extra Wild symbol in sequence, starting with the White Horse, followed by the Black Horse, then the Mountain, and finally the Tree symbol. With just 2 free spins, you'd only get the White and the Black Horse symbols to be the Extra Wilds, so you'd need to get that 6 free spins for much better wins, if your luck allows it! A retrigger of the free spins would certainly help a lot, but retriggers do not happen often, as I have found out! In fact, I got none of it! Sheesh!

All I can say for this Golden Mane game is that it is a money-eating game, with very low payouts and low winning potentials! Yes, you may get that odd 5-Wild symbols on a payline, sooner or later, for a 100x total bet win, but don't expect anything more than that, unless you are very lucky!

Golden Mane slot is one of NexGen's latest releases. I must admit, they do not create anymore nice interesting slots anymore, like the ones with the super bet feature and just like Netent and Quickspin, their pay tables seem to get lower and lower by the day. However Golden Mane has a good pay table but the base game play suck. The only interesting part of this slot is the free spins feature.

The game has a random bonus feature where the screen fades away and only bonus symbols are appearing, giving you a bigger chance to enter the bonus round. When this random feature kicks in 95% of time you trigger the bonus but only the 2 free spins bonus. If you land 2 scatters then you get 2 free spins and you land all 3 scatters you get 6 free spins.

Now the slot itself has 4 premium symbols and they are active. Now during the free spins feature during after every spin, each premium symbol becomes wild now you can understand why it is critical to get all 3 scatters because on spin 5 you have 5 different wild symbols and 5 of a kind are very easy to get then. 5 of kind pays x100 your bet and you can retrigger the free spins feature during free spins as well. If all symbols are turned to wild and you retrigger with 6 spins, you will definitely hit x500 easily on this slot.

I have played this slot many times and the feature triggers often, but when this game is cold you hardly win anything during base game and it can give empty spins after each other. A few days ago, I hit a few wild lines on this slot and made a nice profit. I believe this is one of the latest releases where it is possible to win x300 or x500 your bet.

I would say give this game a try to boost your balance, but not very good for wagering.