Lion Festival Slot – Free Demo
Provider:
Blueprint Gaming
The Lion in Lion Festival only turns up on the three central reels, and when it does it expands over its reel, holds it, and spins again — chaining as far as three wild reels before the sequence stops. Around that, waving cats drop in stacks and all become one randomly chosen paytable symbol, on…
Play Lion Festival demo
A lion dance over five reels and three rows
In Lion Festival, creator Blueprint Gaming takes a journey through the noise and colour of Chinese New Year. I played it at a 2.00 stake for 410 spins. Lion Festival is overflowing with vitality, colour, and features, much like the street procession it borrows from. Lanterns, coins and ingots fill out the reel set around the festival cast. Not much is fresh. The re-spin produced four of my six biggest wins over that run. The re-spin sits at the middle of the game in an intriguing way, though, with the lion dance unfolding over 5 reels and 3 rows.
Déjà vu does not set in when examining the math model. I finished the session 77.20 down on 820.00 wagered. It yields an RTP of 92.48%.
Ten fixed lines, read from both ends
Each spin populates a fixed grid of 10 paylines. At my 2.00 stake that put 0.20 on each line. Those lines count both ways, left to right and right to left, which is often called 20 ways to win, and winning demands landing three or more identical symbols along a line from either end. Of the spins that paid me anything, 58 returned less than the 2.00 they had cost. There is no cascade, so a spin pays once in Lion Festival.
Since Lion Festival is tightly linked to them, festival symbols make a lot of sense. The lanterns, coins and ingots sit below the picture symbols. At the top of the paytable is the Chinese girl, worth 1,000, 150 and 50 times the line bet for five, four and three of a kind, and no other paytable values are listed. Five of her on a line at my 0.20 line bet would have come to 200.00. Finally, helping draw in wins is the Lion wild. It is also the symbol that starts the game's main feature. It appears on reels 2, 3, and 4.
Money Cat stacks pick a symbol
Lion Festival comes stuffed with features, though little is particularly fresh, and additions include the Lion Re-Spin, Money Cat mystery symbols, and a progressive jackpot. The re-spin and the cats both run in the base game.
On any spin, a number of waving Money Cat symbols may randomly drop in stacks. Mystery symbols transform into one and the same randomly chosen paytable symbol. Two of my six best spins came that way: 64.00 on spin 265 and 22.00 on spin 81, 32 and 11 times the stake. With wins paying both ways, that can illuminate several lines at once. My balance peaked at 1,044.40 on spin 269, a few spins after that first cat stack.
The Lion holds the reel and spins again
The chief feature is the Lion Re-Spin, and landing a Lion wild on one of the three central reels activates it. The sequence ends on the first re-spin that arrives without a new Lion. The Lion expands to fill its reel. That reel is held wild, and a re-spin is awarded. It paid me 34.00 on spin 149 with one reel held, and 24.00 on spin 410 with two. When an additional Lion lands on the re-spin, it expands and re-spins again, up to 3 wild reels and 3 re-spins, so the entire centre of the grid can end up wild.
Where the cats and the lion left me
Lion Festival is a mild let-down, though there is nothing amiss with it as such. The longest I went without a win was 13 spins, ending on spin 34. The lion delivers a sturdy bit of line-pays gaming, but where it falls short is in the originality stakes. My balance bottomed out at 802.80. A held-wild re-spin has been executed many times over. Blueprint Gaming's catalogue also includes Wish Upon a Jackpot and Legacy of Ra Megaways. Lion Festival doesn't have an unmissable vibe to it. The re-spin did close the run out, 21.00 on spin 409 and 24.00 on spin 410 back to back. The possible highlight here is the re-spin chaining to three wild reels. That is what generated the largest hit of my 410 spins, 100 times the stake on spin 232.
Over my session the game gave back 90.6%, with only 134 of 410 spins paying anything at all. That left 922.80 of the 1,000.00 I started with.
Minty Slots Verdict: Every one of my six biggest spins came from either a cat stack or the re-spin. Across 410 spins nothing else on the grid did any lifting at all.
A clip show with two good clips
In some respects, Lion Festival is like a TV clip show, displaying highlights from a bunch of previous episodes, and that's not necessarily a poor thing. Yet, they more often than not seem like filler. Partly due to the both-ways pays operating with the cat stacks, Lion Festival dodges this to an extent. It'd be agreeable to see something a bit more daring next time, though.