Irish Pot Luck Slot – Free Demo

What the leprechaun is guarding

I recently played Finn and the Swirly Spin, another Irish-flavoured slot from NetEnt that arrived with some large numbers, but NetEnt's newest, Irish Pot Luck, is built around a different mechanic. It has two named features, Pot Luck and the Jackpot Wheel, and a random multiplier that is drawn on every spin of the main game and of Free Spins. Before the licensed brands arrived to ruin the celebration, this folklore was the foremost theme of the slot floor for decades, and within years the leprechaun had surrendered and commenced his gradual slide into eventual obscurity. The ancient charms might be departed. They left behind the imagery and symbology which have made their way into Irish Pot Luck. The paying symbols are the horseshoe, the harp, the hat and the pipe, with hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs filling the lower end.

Three meters above the reels

The game comes with a slight backstory of pursuing pots of gold in search for riches, and they all claim that don't they. Graphically, NetEnt renders Irish iconography in a vivid contemporary manner, and the green hillside backdrop is rather minimalist, but flat behind the grid. Three jackpot meters, Mini, Midi and Mega, run along the game's header above the reels. The soundtrack sets the atmosphere with a lilting fiddle rhythm, punctuated by clinking coin noises. The general visual impact isn't loud.

I get 3 rows on each of the 5 reels and 20 fixed bet lines, paying left to right, this being a fixed-line game rather than a ways game. Only the highest win on each line is paid, so two combinations sharing a line do not add together.

The pot of gold and the multiplier drawn each spin

The pot of gold is the Wild, and it can land anywhere and substitutes for any symbol except the Scatter and the Jackpot symbol. That exception means a Wild can never help complete a Free Spins or a Jackpot Wheel trigger. Every spin also carries a Random Multiplier. It is worth x1, x2, x3 or x5 in the main game, and the general impact is agreeable, but nothing too over the top - yet.

It applies a multiplier to the spin you are already playing, before anything else is settled. Free Spins runs the same draw on a different set of values. How it works is that a value is drawn before the reels settle. Nothing accumulates from one spin to the next; each spin takes its own value and discards it. So a line that would have paid its face value pays two, three or five times that instead, and this can turn a modest win into a respectable one, and a respectable one into a fine one, and so on. Inside Free Spins the smallest value in the set is x2, so no free spin pays a line at its face value.

Pot Luck and the ten free spins behind it

Other than random multipliers, there is the Pot Luck feature. It positions up to 3 Jackpot or Scatter symbols on reels 1, 3 and 5 and up to 5 Wilds anywhere, which is one way into the Free Spins. Because it can place Jackpot symbols on those same three reels, it is also a way into the Jackpot Wheel. The round starts when 3 Scatters land on reels 1, 3 and 5, which unlock 10 free spins, and 3 additional Scatters inside the round grant another 10. The retrigger asks for the same three reels as the trigger did. The Random Multiplier is redrawn each spin, running x2, x4, x7 or x15. The spin count is the only thing carried between free spins.

Three Jackpot symbols and a wheel that waits

The other route out of the base game is the Jackpot Wheel. Three Jackpot symbols standing on reels 1, 3 and 5 take over the screen with an intro before the wheel itself appears. It is triggered by 3 Jackpot symbols on reels 1, 3 and 5, in the base game or in Free Spins, and the wheel has three tiers - Mini is 20x, Midi is 100x, and Mega is 5,000x the stake. Divine Fortune is the other NetEnt title that splits its jackpots into tiers this way. Sectors can also dispense an Arrow that spins the next tier, an outright multiplier of 2.5x or 10x the bet, or a doubled or tripled Mini or Midi. That puts a doubled Mini at 40x, a tripled Mini at 60x and a doubled Midi at 200x the stake. This feature is awkward to express in words. The wheel screen then sits still with a Start Jackpot Wheel button on it, and nothing turns until that is pressed.

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The Minty Breakdown: Two Free Spins rounds inside 500 spins produced 47% of everything I won, and the rest arrived through a base game where every line win is multiplied before it is paid. The reels stay worth watching between features because of that draw, while the 5,000x sits on the far side of a three-symbol trigger and a wheel of three tiers.

Where the 5,000x sits

In a way, despite the wheel, this is a more conventional slot than it might initially appear. The wheel is the only part of the game that leaves the reels behind. The name of the game is winning it all, or, attempting again another day, and by all, players are looking at a return of up to 5,000 times the stake from the Mega Jackpot. Getting there needs three Jackpot symbols first, and then the wheel to work down its tiers to the Mega sector.

Five hundred spins at 2.40

Another crucial element of Irish Pot Luck's playability is the returns achievable during the base game, and often, jackpot systems come with symbol values which are typically meagre. By giving the game a multiplier on every spin, symbol values have kept decent worth. The main game draw can also land on x1, which leaves a line at exactly its printed value. This matters most during the base game. Make no mistake, though - across 500 spins at 2.40 a go I came back with 92.6% of what I wagered. That was 1,200.00 staked against 1,111.68 returned, with the balance moving from 981.40 down to 893.08. 126 paying spins out of 500 contained 57 that paid less than the stake. The balance peaked at 1,436.44 on spin 93 and never got back to it. The two Free Spins rounds I saw, on spin 93 and spin 154, produced 47% of everything I won, the first of them 499.20 or 208 times the stake. Neither round retriggered, and the longest stretch without a win was 18 spins, which ended on spin 500.