Lucky New Year is a video slot powered by Pragmatic Play software and has 5 reels and 25 pay-lines. This slot is inspired with the Lunar New Year Celebration. Cheerful and colorful design has the gold-rimmed reels set under the roof of a temple during fireworks which lit up the sky quite nicely. Give this slot a spin here for free or visit Pragmatic Play Casinos to play for real.
Before you start celebrating, you should set your betting range. When you click on "+/-" you will set coins size which ranges from 0.01 to 0.50, and coins per line. If you click on "Autoplay" will set the number of times you wish for the reels turn without interruption and "Play" button is used to set the reels in motion after you set your bets.
Gilded Dog is the Wild symbol and it can substitute for all symbols in the game except for the Scatter and Money Symbols. If you land 3 or more Wilds on an active payline, they can form wins on their own.
Golden Tree is the Scatter and it appears only on reels 1, 3 and 5. If you land 3 of these, you will trigger the bonus feature and win 5 Spins. During the Bonus Spins feature, reels 2, 3 and 4 spin together as a Giant symbol. If you land additional 3 symbols during this round, you will get additional 3 spins.
Chinese Lantern is the money symbol and can occur on all reels. Each spin, the lantern takes a random value from a predefined set or takes either Minor or Major Jackpot values. When you land 6 or more Lantern, you will trigger the Money Respin feature.
Money Respin Feature starts after all line wins have been paid out. Once it happens, the normal symbols fade away and the Lantern symbols which triggered the feature remain on the reels. Regular reels will get replaced with a special set that contains only Money Symbol and empty slots. You will start with 3 respins. Each Money Symbol that lands will remain on the screen till the end of the round, each time at least one symbol hits, the number of respins will reset to 3. The round continues until respins are finished or all positions on the screen are filled with Lanterns. If all 15 positions are filled you will also win the Grand Jackpot. The feature is also available during the Bonus Spins feature.
Gameplay:
+/-: Adjust the coins size and coins per line.
Autoplay: The reels will turn without interruption for a chosen number of times.
Play: Set the reels in motion.
Here's one more new Asian-themed game from Pragmatic Play, entitled Lucky New Year - referring to the Chinese New Year, if you cannot already guess. There's actually nothing new in the game, but a combination of 3 features into one game - 3 Jackpot Prizes, a Free Spins Game and a Money Respins feature. Lets take a better look into each feature.
The Jackpot Prizes are of 3 types, namely Minor, Major and Grand, but the prizes aren't that big to be honest, with the Grand Jackpot paying only a 1000x total bet prize. 3 Scatter symbols are needed to activate the Free Spins Game, but the 3 Scatters would only pay back your bet amount instead of the usual 4x or 5x. Not only that, you only get 5 free spins with no win multiplier (argh!), and getting 3 or more Scatters would add another 3 more free spins only (yet one more argh!). If you ask me, this feature sucks!
As for the Money Respins feature, you need to get at least 6 Lantern symbols on the reels to activate it. During the feature game, the initial Lanterns are held in place, whilst all the other positions take a respin. 3 Respins are awarded initially, but each time a new Lantern symbol lands, it resets the number back to 3. Respins continue until all the empty spaces have been filled up, or until no more Respins are available. The cash value shown in each Lantern would then be added up and paid out. This feature may look good, reminding me of NetEnt's Divine Fortune game, but the cash value of each Lantern has much to be desired - they are way too small to produce any big wins - very disappointing!
Okay, so you may now be wondering how the Jackpot prizes can be won, right? In the base game, each appearing Lantern may either show a cash value or show Minor or Major, representing the jackpot. The Grand Jackpot can only be won when you get all 15 Lanterns during the Money Respin feature game. Simple as that, but not simple to get, hehehe.
In one of my Money Respins game, I managed to get 13 out of 15 Lanterns, just short of 2 more Lanterns to win the Grand Jackpot, all part of its 'teaser' no doubt, but what disappointed me the most was in the total winning amount - it only gave a 51x bet win! Getting 14 Lanterns out of the possible 15 would not have made the final win much bigger anyway, so this really sucks!