Money Link Moon Goddess Slot – Free Demo

Mooncakes, lanterns and a pergola on top of the paytable

Light & Wonder is a software studio that's been making slots for both land-based and online casinos for well over a decade. I've never had a reason to assess a Light & Wonder slot before. But with too much time on my hands, and no other slot in the fire hole, I chose to give their new slot Money Link Moon Goddess a try. I set the stake at 1.20 credits and played 250 spins of it, wagering 300.00 and getting 268.80 back.

Money Link Moon Goddess is a 5-reel, 3-row slot with 40 paylines, 96,00% RTP and a pair of scatter symbols, and it's a basic slot that no one would suppose was made recently judging by the weary-looking graphics. The two scatters do different jobs: the Scatter Rattle Drum hands out the free spins, the Scatter Coin runs the Money Link Feature. This is a Jackpot slot that arrives with a couple of features. Three Scatter Rattle Drums start the free spins, where every Mystery Symbol locks in place and a fresh symbol is picked to replace the whole locked block on each spin. I will examine them further below, but the game doesn't really need an instruction handbook to be honest.

Symbols on the reels include the usual low paying 10, J, Q, K, A symbols. Mystery Symbols turn up as well, and during the base game they reveal as any other symbol except the Scatter Rattle Drum. There are also 4 high value symbols in the shape of mooncakes, white rabbits, lanterns, and the Moon Goddess herself, with the latter being the top paying ordinary symbol of the lot, and the most valuable symbol of all however is the Wild Pergola. The Scatter Rattle Drum only shows up in the base game and only on reels 2, 3 and 4, and one of my frames catches a single one on reel 4 next to a 4.68 payout from mooncakes. It perches on top of the paytable and stands in for everything except the two scatters and the Mystery Symbol.

The Scatter Coin round, held position by held position

6 or more Scatter Coin symbols sets off the Money Link Feature with 3 opening spins granted, and any Scatter Coin symbol dropping on the reels are locked throughout the feature. One of the frames I kept shows a block of Mystery Symbols across four reels with the game's own prompt underneath, naming 6 Scatter Coin as the trigger. All positions with no Scatter Coin symbols will spin. The round is played at the bet that triggered it. Any later Scatter Coin symbols are locked and re-spins revert to 3, and the feature concludes when all 3 spins have been played or in the case of a full-screen of Scatter Coin symbols. Across my 250 spins the sixth coin never came in, so the feature stayed shut for the whole run. The coins bear cash prizes from x1 to x75 or any of the jackpots. Scatter Coin wins are worked out against the total bet rather than the bet multiplier. No paytable wins are paid while the feature runs.

Meters that ignore the stake

Mini, Minor, Major and Mega jackpots may be won on the coins during the Money Link Feature. Whatever the held coins are showing when the round ends is all paid out. Each of them can land more than once in a single feature, while filling every position in the reel window grants the Grand, and jackpot prizes are fixed, meaning they're not progressive. They aren't multiplied by the bet multiplier either. The value of the jackpots does not grow with the bet size. On the frames I captured the Major meter reads 150 credits, the Minor 60 and the Mini 12. On a 1.20-credit total bet, the Grand jackpot is 2,400 credits and the Mega is 300.

Our Minty Verdict: 250 spins at 1.20 came back at 89,6%, and one bonus round worth 73x the stake carried a third of everything I won. Light & Wonder has been running this held-coin idea for years, in Dancing Drums Link and in Ultimate Fire Link China Street, and Moon Goddess adds nothing to it.

The one bonus of the run

Money Link Moon Goddess is an awful slot in every way possible, and the graphics are dismal, the payouts even more so. Only 58 of the 250 spins paid anything at all, and 30 of those came back worth less than the 1.20 stake. 250 spins at 1.20 returned 89,6%, with a single free spins round worth 73x doing a third of the work. The balance peaked at 1,086.52 straight after that round and sank to 958.36 at its lowest, with one stretch of 18 spins in a row paying nothing, ending on spin 216. The hold-and-respin feature has been overworked by this point.